{"id":1565,"date":"2012-06-09T15:48:14","date_gmt":"2012-06-09T15:48:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saasoft.com\/blog\/?p=1565"},"modified":"2012-06-09T15:48:14","modified_gmt":"2012-06-09T15:48:14","slug":"all-aboard-for-the-ride-of-our-lives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/?p=1565","title":{"rendered":"All Aboard for the Ride of Our Lives!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In 1825 the world changed when the Age of Rail\u00a0was born with the opening of the Darlington-to-Stockton\u00a0line and the demonstration that a self-powered mobile steam engine could pull more trucks of coal than a team of horses.<\/p>\n

This launched the industrial revolution into a new phase by improving the capability\u00a0to transport heavy loads\u00a0over long distances more conveniently,\u00a0reliably, quickly, and cheaply than could canals or roads.<\/p>\n

Within 25 years the country was criss-crossed by thousands of miles of railway track and thousands more miles were rapidly spreading across the world. We take it for granted now but this almost overnight success was the result of over 100 years of painful innovation and improvement. Iron rail tracks had been in use for a long time – particularly in quarries and ports. Newcomen\u2019s atmospheric\u00a0steam engine had been pumping water out of mines since 1712; James Watt and Matthew Boulton had patented their improved separate condenser static steam engine in 1775; and Richard Trevethick had built a self-propelled high pressure steam engine called \u201cPuffing Devil\u201d in 1801. So why did it take so long for the idea to take off? The answer was quite simple \u2013 it needed the lure of big profits to attract\u00a0the entrepreneurs who had the necessary influence and cash to make it happen at scale and pace.\u00a0 The replacement of windmills and watermills by static steam engines had already allowed factories to be built anywhere – rather than limiting them to\u00a0the tops of windy hills and the sides of fast flowing rivers.\u00a0But\u00a0it was not until the industrial revolution had achieved sufficient momentum that road and canal transport became a serious constraint to further growth of industry, wealth and the\u00a0British Empire.<\/p>\n

But not everyone was happy with the impact that mechanisation brought – the Luddites were the skilled craftsmen who opposed the use of mechanised looms that could be operated by lower-skilled and therefore cheaper labour. \u00a0They were crushed in 1812\u00a0by political forces more powerful than they were\u00a0– and the term “luddite” is now used for anyone who blindly opposes change\u00a0from a position self-protection.<\/p>\n

Only 140 years later it was all over for the birthplace of the Rail Age \u2013 the steam\u00a0locomotive was relegated to the museums when Dr Richard Beeching ,\u00a0the efficiency-focussed Technical Director of ICI, published his reports that led to the cost-improvement-programme (CIP)\u00a0that reorganised the railways and led to the loss of 70,000 jobs, hundreds of small “unprofitable” stations and 1000’s of miles of track.\u00a0\u00a0And the reason for the collapse of the railways was that roads had leap-frogged both canals and railways because the “internal combustion engine” proved a smaller, lighter, more powerful, cheaper and more flexible alternative to steam or horses.<\/p>\n

It is of historical interest that Henry Ford developed the production line to mass produce\u00a0automobiles\u00a0at a price that a factory worker could\u00a0afford\u00a0– and Toyoda\u00a0invented a self-stopping\u00a0mechanised loom that improved productivity dramatically by preventing\u00a0damaged cloth\u00a0being produced if a thread\u00a0broke by accident.\u00a0The historical links come together because Toyoda sold the patents to his self-stopping loom to fund the creation of the Toyota Motor Company\u00a0which used Henry Ford’s production-line design and\u00a0integrated the Toyoda self-monitoring, stopping\u00a0and continuous improvement philosophy.<\/p>\n

It was not until twenty years after\u00a0British Rail was created\u00a0that\u00a0Japan emerged as\u00a0an\u00a0industrial superpower by demonstrating\u00a0that it had learned how to improve both quality and reduce cost\u00a0much more\u00a0effectively than the “complacent”\u00a0Europe and\u00a0America. The tables were turned and this time it was the West that\u00a0had to learn – and quickly.\u00a0 Unfortunately not quickly enough.\u00a0Other developing countries seized\u00a0the opportunity that\u00a0mass mechanisation, customisation\u00a0and a large, low-expectation, low-cost\u00a0workforce offered. They now\u00a0produce manufactured goods at prices that European and American\u00a0companies cannot compete with. Made in Britain\u00a0has become\u00a0Made in China.<\/p>\n

The lesson of history has been repeated many times \u2013 innovations are like seeds that germinate but do not disseminate until the context\u00a0is just right \u2013 then they grow, flower, seed and spread – and\u00a0are themselves eventually relegated to\u00a0museums by the innovations that they spawned.<\/p>\n

Improvement Science\u00a0has been in existence for a long time in various forms, and\u00a0it is now finding more favourable soil to grow as traditional reactive and\u00a0incremental improvement methods run out of steam when confronted with complex system problems. Wicked problems such as\u00a0a world population that is growing larger and older at the same time as\u00a0our reserves of non-renewable natural resources are dwindling.<\/p>\n

The promise\u00a0that Improvement Science\u00a0offers is the ability to avoid the\u00a0boom-to-bust\u00a0economic roller-coaster that devastates communities twice –\u00a0on the rise and again on the fall. Improvement Science offers an approach that allows sensible and sustainable changes to be planned, implemented\u00a0and\u00a0then progressively improved.<\/p>\n

So what do\u00a0we want to do? Watch from the sidelines and hope, or leap aboard\u00a0and help?<\/p>\n

And\u00a0remember what happened to the Luddites!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 1825 the world changed when the Age of Rail\u00a0was born with the opening of the Darlington-to-Stockton\u00a0line and the demonstration that a self-powered mobile steam engine could pull more trucks of coal than a team of horses. This launched the industrial revolution into a new phase by improving the capability\u00a0to transport heavy loads\u00a0over long distances … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “All Aboard for the Ride of Our Lives!”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,15,17,18,23,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-design","category-examples","category-finance","category-history","category-productivity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1565\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}