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My name goes here

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In 2007 I was an electronics instructor for a powerful international organization. The organizations was always looking for ways to cut costs, and since manpower very expensive the managers wanted to see if they could cut manpower while retaining operational effectiveness. An outside group was hired to examine manning levels in the field, and make recommendations on improving efficiency, while the schoolhouse staff I directed was also tasked with researching how the system was manned, and how planned upgrades would affect manning levels in the future. Initially we used current instructions to determine personnel assignments and divisions of labor during operations to give us a baseline. This was helpful because often these guidelines are based on years of experience by technicians and operators under real-world conditions. Next, we used students who were approaching graduation, but with no actual experience in the field, and had them try to operate the system with reduced manpower without giving them the current instructions. We were hoping that the students would bring a fresh perspective to the problem and find a new way to accomplish the task. Finally, a group of the engineers who design the system upgrades along with seasoned instructors with many years of practical experience operating the equipment in the field ran scenarios and brainstormed new ideas.
Our assessment was that no reductions were possible, based on the addition of tasks created by system enhancements that were being installed by the engineers throughout the fleet. The outside organization tasked with analyzing the current system recommended cuts to the operational teams, and their findings were accepted and implemented by management. Those cuts affected the teams negatively, and in the field those teams were forced to train additional personnel who were not tasked with those duties on a normal basis in order to fill in the now empty positions so they could accomplish their tasks. The end result was that my team’s recommendations were correct, and the operators in the field were forced to make up for management’s decision in order to accomplish their objectives.

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