If Deming Had 2 Cows, or, TQM: I Fell For It Again September 2, 2007

I’ve decided that Total Quality Management is like communism: a good idea in theory, miserable tyranny in practice.

At Famous Wholesale Nursery, their own version of TQM was handed down to the masses. Should your efforts at work be incompatible with continuous process improvement, you would be beaten and left in a dark alley. What I mean to say is that you would be provided with additional training.

To impregnate the masses with a sense of accountability and ownership of the processes at which they toiled, they would be provided with drinking water that tasted only slightly of fertilizer. Er, I mean, they would be rewarded for the efforts, both financially and with promotions.

Of the many people I met and worked with during my internship, three embraced and ran with the TQM principles. Ironically, I was one of the three, because I still want to believe in TQM. The other 497 people stood around with a hunted look in their eyes.

The problems, as I see them:

• short sighted goals
• a mission statement that was revised no less than 8 times in 5 years
• top management that thinks TQM is nice feel-good propaganda for workers but doesn’t actually apply to them
• believing that outright lies have a place in TQM and that no one will find out
• having no respect or esteem for the people who perform the main work of the business
• the continued employment of arrogant, contemptuous tyrants in key management positions

TQM can only be successful with the right alchemy of intangibles: managers who like people and want the company and workers to be successful, workers who trust management enough to buy-in in the first place, the stamina of both parties to trudge on through the growing pains of real organizational change.

In other words, though a practical business model with proven success in organizations like Toyota, it can only work when everyone wants it very badly and when they want it for the right reasons. Management will never be able to sell a watered down, disingenuous, half-assed version of TQM and expect it to fly. It looks good on paper and you can murmur about ISO 9000 certifications and collaborative efforts until your two rationed cows come home, and then I’ll come along…and I’ll fall for it again.

I’ve seen it work a couple times, and I still believe there’s a future for me and TQM. We’re meant to be.

External Links: How TQM is supposed to work and the cows reference explained

Trivia Hoedown #7 July 14, 2007

1. Plants that are drought tolerant in the landscape can be extremely wilty in containers, so much so that they’re difficult to keep alive during the hot months.

2. The distribution map for Phytophthora ramorum bears a striking resemblance to the distribution map for marijuana cultivation on the west coast.

3. When a one-gallon plant costs upwards of $15, that’s usually because a royalty to the breeder or person who discovered the plant is being passed on. It can run as high at $3.00 per plant sold, which adds up when one nursery produces 2,000 of them at one location, and they’re being produced all over the country.

4. Processed manure or compost at that friable, good smelling stage is called “cake”. Mmmmm.

5. If you buy a plant and put it in your landscape with all the right conditions and it lives but doesn’t grow, it has likely been treated with plant growth regulators to keep its compact shape. Some PGRs can take nearly a year to fully metabolize out of the plant.

6. I wish I could tell you about the amazing machinery Famous Wholesale Nursery has invented and fabricated to do various jobs around the nursery. But they are so secretive about them, they are stored and parked in hidden spots and never left in the field when visitors come. So I cannot. Trust me, they’re awe inspiring.

7. I am low on trivia this week, but high on bruises (7), weird chafing injuries (2), broken toes (1), and cuts (14).

Maybe we shouldn’t leave her alone with the liquid nitrogen July 8, 2007

Science Scout Merit Badges

I do hereby declare: I have frozen stuff in liquid nitrogen for the sake of scientific curiosity.

On Friday, they left me alone in the lab doing sample prep for DNA extraction, and I have never been able to just buckle down and work in the presence of liquid nitrogen. It’s too compelling. I had to splash it from hand and hand and throw some on the floor to see the dust bunnies spin, then I froze some random stuff.

Samples that could conceivably be relevant:

branches and central leader segments from Acer sango-kaku
leaves from same
soil sample
Osmocote
water
the mortal and pestle

Samples that could not:

the cap of a highlighter
a latex glove
the corner of my fingernail
several hairs from my head (awesome by the way)

I spent a moment regretting that I am without warts. It was the best time I’ve had in weeks.

I remember in high school they wouldn’t let us near the liquid nitrogen, but they broke a thermometer in chemistry class and let us pass the mercury around. Excellent.

I have cloned something: new plants in vitro from cultures of somatic cells.

I have eaten what I study and I’ll do it again: plants!

In my research I have to wash my hands before I use the bathroom. Your personal bits are vulnerable you know.

I have used the safety shower in my lab. And more than once.

I work with acids.

Arts and Crafts: you can make some cool stuff with epitubes and Parafilm.

I blog about science.

I bet you a cup of tea it’s Pythium July 7, 2007

I’m not going to hoedown on schedule this week because most of what I’m learning at Famous Wholesale Nursery is how to tolerate abject misery. It’s hot, my feet hurt, and my enthusiasm is waning. Nevertheless, on I trudge. I keep thinking wistfully about people who intern in offices and stay cool all day.  But I can also picture the slot on my resume with this summer’s experience.

My stint in the research section of the nursery has extended into extra days here and there, and for this I am most grateful. I owe my mentor at school for preparing me with bench techniques and knowledge of conversions which have set the stage for my being invited back. Really, I should send him a fruit basket or something. Working with the cool burn of liquid nitrogen is far preferable to being bent over all day pruning 1-gallon Echinacea or removing by hand the liverwort from 3,000 tiny Lilacs.

Yesterday I learned DNA extraction and ELISA testing for Phytophthora and Pythium. I have a new respect for how long DNA testing takes: the extraction alone, with sample prep, incubation time, spinning and changing substrates, took over 6 hours. That doesn’t even include the PCR or sequencing that will have to wait until next week (when I will hopefully be invited back again). The ELISA testing was also no slouch, taking about 4 hours to incubate and finally win my bet: the orchid die back was Pythium which was my guess going in.

The person I work with in the lab likes to bet what results will be before we run tests. “What do you think the fresh weight to dry weight ratio will be?” “Which of these samples do you think will test positive for Phytophthora?” “I know what the leaching fraction will be – want to bet me?” I have generally been losing these bets with my very limited experience in these matters, so my Pythium bet was a sweet win. Pythium really does have a distinct appearance, like a tiny mower came in and bit off all your plants at the soil level, leaving the stems black and water logged. For once, I knew what it was as soon as I saw the plants.

In school, we are told over and over how the measure of your competence as a horticulturist will be made by the accuracy of your diagnoses. This is alarming, because any one symptom can be representative of a number of different things. Take yellow, burnt looking leaves. That could be nutrient deficiency, nutrient toxicity, wilt, overwatering, salt burn, sun burn, chemical burn, fungus, insect, virus, bacterial infection, chilling injury. Granted you have some hints in what the weather has been like, what the cultural conditions are, and knowledge of the plant and the area, but suffice it to say, it’s difficult to pinpoint a novel crop problem at a glance. The methodical approach works, but it takes some time. And time wise, it’s not terribly efficient to do bioassays and gene sequencing every time you have a problem.

That’s time I have though: I’d be happy to work in the lab every day until my last day at Famous Wholesale Nursery. I’ve laid some heavy hints. We’ll see if it flies.

They’re not widgets, they’re plants. June 30, 2007

This is what my propagation professor says to us, in this disgusted, long suffering tone, when we ask about why one plant is an exception to a rule that works for everything else. “They’re not widgets, they’re plants.”

I had a dream last night, and it felt like it lasted all night long: I’m in a huge factory and there are conveyor belts and steaming machinery and chaos everywhere. Newly extruded widgets plants march out completed and are boxed at breakneck speed. There’s a whistle and forklifts and screaming foremen. The green, perfect plants are the only living thing in the factory, and that includes the people. I keep trying to touch them, but they tear by on their way to the organophosphate shower or the pruning station and are just out of my reach. All night long, my feet hurt and I feel both sad and eager for the five o’clock whistle.

Deep.

Trivia Hoedown #5 June 23, 2007

It’ll be hard to share trivia with you without telling you Famous Wholesale Nursery’s secrets, but I’m going to give it a shot.

1. I pruned 630 five-gallon boxwoods. Did you hear me? 630. By hand. With heavy tijeras grandes. In the hot sun. For eight hours. I rule.

2. If you are the kind of person who can’t pee in a port-a-potty, or can pee but only if a stable hover can be accomplished, you just haven’t been in the right situation to consummate your relationship with the outhouse. When you’re finally tired enough that you’ll sit down damn near anywhere – nay, you will lie on the gravel road to rest your back for a moment – it is then that you will happily sit on the port-a-potty seat and not give splash-up a second thought.

3. Incidentally, I suspect that careful splash physics calculations have been worked in an effort to ensure that you don’t leave the potty with a chemical blue stain on your hiney. I want to meet the people who did those calculations, and I want to discuss the assumptions and variables therein.

4. If you haven’t ridden in the back of a pick up truck recently, it’s hellafun.

5. Hard labor and little sleep have beaten me into a sweet state of reasonableness and giddiness. If you want something from me, now’s the time to ask.

6. One of the most common ways to die in an agriculture setting is drowning in the irrigation pond.

7.  Conifers can take 8-13 years in the production cycle – from propagation to ready for sale – the reason for their often high prices.

8.  By the time plants leave the wholesale nursery bound for retail stores, wholesalers, and landscapers, the cost to produce them is known to the penny.  They have been handled and worked on a minimum of 15 times, not including feeding, spraying or irrigation.

9.  The margin for perennials, shrubs, and trees is a lot smaller than I thought:  somewhere in the neighborhood of 10-25%.

10.  It’s amazing how hideous plants look at various points in the production cycle.  I’ve only been acquainted with this company’s plants on the retail end, and they came out of the truck looking practically extruded they were so perfect and unblemished.  In the field, they often look utterly dreadful.  There’s a lot of primping and fussing in the last few weeks before they are shipped.

11.  Labor that includes stooping, bending over, and lifting hurts really bad after the first 30 minutes or so.  It’s bad for about an hour, then it comes and goes.  If you can get through the periods of abject misery, they become fewer and farther between and suddenly, you’re in the zone.   Ridiculously, it feels like an accomplishment.

12.  Listen up heat sensitive folks.  It’s counter-intuitive, but being completely covered lowers your temperature considerably.  Long pants, a wide brimmed hat, and a light colored, long sleeved shirt over a thin t-shirt are salva vidas.  You’ll still need sunscreen and plenty of water, but the coverage helps immensely.

13.  Before straining your back and working harder than you thought possible, stock up on frozen vegetables and apply them to said body part the instant you arrive home.  Take analgesics preemptively.

14.  I’ve never been more convinced that graduate school is in my future.