My first job in IT was as a workstation auditor for a company called Tom Walkinshaw Racing. TWR were one of the first companies to carry out the design and manufacturing process of new cars entirely electronically, so it was an exciting place to work in a small but busy IT department. TWR allowed me to grow into an operations support engineer which has been the foundation of my career ever since. Unfortunately in 2002 we went bust. I was far too low down the food chain to fully understand all of the reasons, but one of the contributing factor’s was the collapse of MG Rover as we were working on the new MG’s at the time.
I watched with interest Das Auto: The Germans, Their Cars and Us on BBC2 on Sunday night. It compared the history of the German and British Car industries. What really struck me throughout the program was that many of the reasons for success of the German Car industry paralleled the principles currently being championed in the Devops movement:
Culture. One of the major themes of the program was the differences in management approaches towards the engineers and workers developing the cars. The well-known discord between unions and management throughout the life of many UK car companies, most notably British Leyland came as no surprise. What did was the German relationship to Trade unions. German Labour Laws requires that at least 5 workers are represented at board level and have full voting rights. This promotes a culture of collaboration towards what is right for the company as a whole. Engineers are respected for their skillsets and often the German car companies encouraged further education up to doctorate level.
Automation. The encouragement of developing highly skilled workers meant that automation of production line facilities occurred much earlier in Germany than it did in England, this allowed for quicker and more consistent delivery of vehicles. In Britian, a combination of lack of respect of the skills of the workforce by management teams, and union pressure to maintain manual jobs meant that automation did not take place until much much later.
Measurement. The German philosophy to car design was to listen to customer feedback. The development of the Volkswagen Golf was in response to the soaring price of petrol in the 70’s and the need for families to have reliable but economical family cars. The BMW brand in the 80’s was developed in response to the rise of Yuppies and emulated the importance of status in their advertising. British family cars by comparison were advertised as high status symbols, completely missing their target audience.
Sharing. As with advertising, the German car industry continually improved their models based on feedback and measurement. On first release, the Volkswagen Beetle had a massive amount of defects, but it was continuously improved to become the most manufactured car of a single design. British cars by comparison were notoriously unreliable, and rarely improved, forcing a mass market that were keen to ‘Buy British’ to shop elsewhere.
I found it really fascinating that the success and failures of a completely different industry reflected the success and failures currently playing out in the I.T. industry, and it was reassuring that the best practices being advocated in Devops mirrored the attributes of success of the German car industry.
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