Conference 7.286::digital

Although Ron didn't say it explicitly - I'd like to see examples also
of a working process or system too - and with one major rule.

Said system is supporting the customer.

	I don't want to here about payroll, ieg, rotcon, our internal pbx
	notes, vtx, vp promotions, fleet plan a, tms, etc.

	I want to see if we do have a customer support process somewhere 
	that really works.


/jon 

    Payroll works very well... In 10 years I haven't missed a check...
    
    Can we get them to answer customer calls....
    
    Jon
    

>    Please, can someone, anyone, anywhere in Digital, tell me about a
>    system or process that is WORKING? Im sure there must be one.
    
this conference...  8-)

-mark

Dont let note 4706 discourage you too much. While the CSC does have some problems. We do
handle over 7000 calls/day; and sometimes over 10,000. Where things go wrong, work is being
dome to correct those issues.

Pat

    Downsizing
    

    Re: .1
    
    This is a stretch on the word "process", but:
    
    The only thing that is working, in my opinion, that is supporting
    customers are the dedicated employees, who despite all of the obstacles,
    broken systems, policies and morale busting activities continue to
    provide service to our customers as best they can in spite of it all.
    
    Professionalism and integrity is a tough "process" to break, I wonder
    how long it will continue to hold out against the forces at work.
      
    JB
    
    
    
    
    

    
    all of the systems that I use work.
    do they work well, or are they efficient?no.
    they are all too outdated.
    so they require me to babysit them.
    
    what is being destroyed is the people network, that supported the
    internal systems. The more people that are let go, the worse
    it gets.
    
    But, as long as everything is so...screwed up. I still have 
    a job.
    
    
    

    How about VTX IR / webir.das.dec.com.  Satisfies all my requirements 
    for information to keep our Business Partner's up-to-date.  Maybe the
    PID sections could be more stricky enforced.
    
    	Regards,

Our cafeteria here in Valbonne is pretty good.  My wastebaskets are being
emptied pretty regularly.  And (unlike the US Postal Service) no one has
come in with a gun and killed any former colleagues.

___Pete

    
    Am I going to be unpopular with this answer !   ;^) 
    
    My customer saw very little of the last 3 years' reorganisation. I was
    their sales rep. three years ago. I still am now. I went through 4 or 5
    different sales organisations, but they hardly could tell the
    difference !
    
    They get frustrated (as everybody) with the CSC problem, but eventually
    get through, and usually their problem is solved in the following days.
    They have an FAE they can call nearly anytime to solve any HW/SW
    problem. They love the fact that we take care of telling them when it's
    time to sign those service orders because warranty is ending (HP or SUN
    don't seem to practice the same method - at least that's what they say)
    They appreciate the fact that we don't expect major changes in our
    architecture for the next years, since we have made them all during the
    past three (32 to 64 BIT...etc...)
    They are however extremely frustrated with our inability to deliver
    quickly. They hate our incapacity to be flexible when they come up with
    a non-standard request (quite frequent with TOEMs), but all in all
    business is growing year after year (from 1 to 4 M$ in 3 yrs).
    
    Of course this is because, as many of you do, we act as a cushion
    between them and Digital.
    
    Now, if we're talking about what I see internally, that's another
    question. I often think there may be somebody inside Digital, maybe
    paid by some competitors of ours to make everything so difficult that
    you just end up throwing the sponge. It takes a lot of hard will to keep
    going. We have a BIG problem with process, not with products nor people
    (although giving up low-end PCs may not be a bad idea!)
    
    Sorry if I bored anybody, but although the last notes were amusing, I
    thought it may be useful to inform anybody interested that we're still
    perceived as a good company by some customers.
    
    Michel.
    
                                              

    So, I was just wondering how we got from the sentiments expressed in
    note 3846 to this note in a little over a year.  I was also wondering
    if Mr Palmer would respond to this note as he did then.
    
    Roy

    Not bad one note .10 out of eleven .
    
    

    I get a constant stream of memo-noise...
    
    .mike. 

    re: .10
    >>We have a BIG problem with process, not with products nor people
    
    i have to agree with michel, 
    having been with DEC for 15 years (insider) and now still working 
    for DEC but as in independent consultant, (outsider)
    i have to say that many customers just don't care about DEC "internal
    woes", they just like the products and some are really *in love* with them.
    
    sometimes they are concerned about the lower level of tech support
    they get due to many good people leaving.
    
    Current problems are: 
    
    	- Broken , clumsy processes,
    	- Demotivation of many people inside DEC
    	- Too many high level people spending time doing secretarial jobs.
    
    as far as the PCs go, i would just stop building them, become a Compaq
    OEM, and, in exchange for the million or so PCs/year we would buy, get
    them to adopt Alpha as a higher end alternative to Intel.
    
    Bruno, investing much of the money i get in DEC stock...
    p.s. i'll repeat that, DEC from the outside looks much better than it
    appears to the insiders.

Friday 18:00 - leaving the office after helping a Customer get their new
	TLaser integrated into their existing MI/MA Cluster. They seem
	happy, and say Thanks :-)

Friday 20:00 - Paged by the OCC, need to help a large Police Ident Unit
	get one of their workstaion's working. Been down for 3 days, prisoners
	are getting lost. Go on-site. It's running the NeXT Step O/S, whats
	that. Got hardware flying by 2 am. Install the O/S, do customize
	with a SW dude from Canada helping. Oh no a bad monitor ! Go for a
	drive at 5 am and get a new one. All better and humming along by 9 am.
	They seem happy, don't say much.

Saturday 09:00 - Spend an hour on the CellPhone helping Conn MCS get their
	Customer StorageWorks DRAM_INT events defined. Plan put in place,
	data gathered.

Saturday 11:00 - Home finally, but the pager calls me again. Spend the next
	six hours on the phone and dialed in to Lotus. Needs new FXDriver
	installed in their FDDI/MI Cluster. Up and running by 5 pm. Wait and
	see on this one.

get a little sleep ZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzz

Sunday 14:00 - Paged again by the OCC, DEC's order entry system for all of
	Europe is down. Hey sales are down in Europe, what's the big deal.
	Just kidding :-) Onsite, security almost tells me I can't go in !
	Make me feel bad ! The TLaser is broken. parts are replaced, but
	DECUnix is toasted, SW folks jump through hoops and it's flying
	again. 22:00 orders are once again flowing from Europe.

get a little more sleep ZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzz

Monday 07:00 - Dialed into MIT to check on their TLaser. still fine, but
	need Raid work, and LSM, but need DECevent too.

Monday 08:00 - Talking with MWRA about their TLaser, need to order the 3.6
	Alpha Firmware update CD's, and some more DECevent CD's too.

Monday 08:30 - And the normal work week starts again.

Now mr Bob is telling me I have to be MORE Customer focused. Sir, with all
due respect, lend me your porsche, and I'll get to the Customers so much
quicker. Give me some good tools and I'll be more efficient. And please let
me get some sleep once in awhile !!!!!!

Just another 70 or 80 or 90 hour week. PLEASE PLEASE don't chop us Service
Delivery Professionals again. We in the Field and the CSC are already doing
too much with too little.

But what do I know, I'm just a grunt !!!!!

Regards;
Dave Y.

    I heard an interesting story on USA's NPR the other day, about a
    problem the Japanese business world is having, with people (mostly men)
    dying prematurely because so much overtime is expected as a matter of
    course.  (Some by suicide, some by sheer overwork, some perhaps because
    of depression brought on by the latter)  There's a sort of cultural
    rebellion afoot...  Can't remember the Japanese term for this problem.
    

    Dan, could this be called seppuku?
    
    If not it sure seems to be what's happening to Digital.
    
    "Ritual suicide by disembowelment"
    
    Jim C.
    

    I believe it is called Hari Kiri.
    
    We practive the same over in the CSC over here in the UK.
    
    Steven F.

    Death from overwork:  karoshi

    Death from bad singing:  karaoke

    Death from bad Sushi:  Sushicide

    .19 is right.  The rest are funny black humor, but my point was in .19.
                                                                           

Just got off the phone with my [Fortune 50] customer.  They have had
Digital UNIX V4.0 up for the last few weeks.  Here are quotes from the
conversation:

        "From my admittedly biased point of view, what your
        Digital UNIX engineering group has done in taking V3.X functionality
        upto V4.0 is nothing short of astounding!"

His comments were based on his experiences in porting their real-time, thread
based simulation application to both Solaris, and Digital UNIX.  With regards
to the Solaris port:

        "I hope I never have to do one again"

        "Their support of POSIX threads is limited - they recommended
        continued use of their proprietary OS features; unlike Digital
        which has complete POSIX functionality as their preferred
        interface, with their proprietary CMA available for compatibility"

        "Every time I get a point-release from Sun, I have to recompile
        at least, because of changing low-level system interfaces; on
        Digital, I have built on V3.X and run just fine on V4.0"

The hardware performance is another area of delight.  The 200 MHZ UltraSPARC
is just keeping up with a DEC 3000/600 on this in-house application.  Their
Alphastation 500 5/333 is almost 4 times the speed of the 200 MHz UltraSPARC.

The customer is noticing!

Ram Rao
UNIX Ambassador, Indianapolis

    RE:                  <<< Note 4709.19 by DONVAN::KEEFE >>>
    > Death from overwork:  karoshi
    
    From my Dilbert(r) calendar for 5 July:
    
    (Dilbert, Wally and The Boss are in a meeting.  The Boss is speaking.)
    
    In Japan, employees occasionally work themselves to death.  It's called
    karoshi.
    
    I don't want that to happen to anybody in my department.
    
    The trick is to take a break as soon as you see a bright light and hear
    dead relatives beckon.
    
    (c) 1993 United Feature Syndicate, Inc.   Reproduced without
    permission, etc, etc, etc...

    I seem to recall one of the TV news magazines (20/20?) did a segment on
    karoshi about 5 years ago. They talked about how Japanese management used
    to call all of the extra hours "service overtime". I recall that the
    reason that this was "newsworthy" was that a doctor/coroner declared
    the cause of death for this middle aged man as "karoshi" or worked
    himself to death. The company was very angry with the doctor because I
    guess this put them in a bad light. What struck me about the story was
    that they interviewed the widow and showed the home. The man used to
    communicate with his kids by writing messages on a white board since he
    never got to see them. The last message he wrote was still on the
    board; it was over a year old and the kids wouldn't let it be erased as
    it was one of the few memories that they had of him.

    I seem to recall that this story came out about the same time that the
    press was reporting comments attributed to Japanese managers saying
    that Americans were "fat and lazy".

    Deb

    
    re karoshi - this reminds me of one of my favorite folk aphorisms:
    
    "Nobody's last words are 'I wish I had spent more time at the office'".
    
    len.
    

    ...and reminds me of this one:
    
    	"Beware the illusion that you can use wealth and power to buy back
         the time you misspent trying to attain them".

        The vice-president production process seems to be working.
        
        Dave Z

    
    	And sometimes the "ship to customer" process also works for
    	the VP's.
    
    	8^)