Engineers and Operators: Same Machine, Same Problem

The engineers would run a trial. Sharp people, solid plan, everything right on paper.
And it wouldn't quite work.

I always got along with those engineers. A lot of people on the floor didn't, they'd roll their eyes at the guys with all those degrees. I never did. I knew they were smart. They could do the math and the theory I never could. So I worked with them instead of against them, and they trusted me back.

So when a trial came up short, they'd let me get on the machine. Show me where it didn't work. A few changes later it was running or we had a direction to go.

That never meant I was smarter than them. Their math wasn't wrong. It was incomplete. The missing piece was the stuff that lives in an operator's hands and never makes it onto the page.

They had the part I couldn't do. I had the part they couldn't see. Together we filled in the gaps.

Thirty years in, I've still got gaps. I still call people smarter than me when I'm stuck. The ones who think they know it all? They usually cause the problem. I've never met anybody who had glass all figured out, including me.

The best work I ever did wasn't the engineer being right or the operator being right. It was both of us in front of the same machine, solving the same problem.

I wonder how much good work never happens because the two sides won't talk.

Originally posted on LinkedIn. Join the conversation there.