Zero defects was introduced to the Army during the Carter years.
A civilian management trainer, Phillip Crosby, is credited with coining the term and IIRC, Donn Starry as CG TRADOC was a proponent in between bouts of developing Air Land Battle doctrine.:rolleyes:
The concept but not the phrase existed in the 1960s as a result of Robert Strange McNamara and his Whiz Kid systems analysis and operational research guys; they tended to ask for '...results, not reasons...' Same basic idea. "Engineering success' is another euphemism -- all mean the same thing, micromanagement.
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Originally Posted by
Pete
I've noticed a number a number of guys mentioning a "zero defects" atmosphere in the 1990s Army... Zero defects was eventually repudiated, at least outside of the engineering and manufacturing community.
Yep but it endures in heirarchial organizations like Armies.
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A guy who had been in the 82nd told me that in the 1960s the way to prepare for an in-ranks inspection in fatigues was to have a friend hold your trousers while you jumped into them from the top bunk so they wouldn't wrinkle behind the knee. (No sitting down allowed.)
Well that's true -- and the Old Guard honor guard folks going to ceremonies in the DC area go in buses with all the passenger seats removed for the same reason...
More than one Squad Bay was waxed with illegal paste wax (which the PX obligingly sold) and the Troops were forbidden form walking in the center of the bay, they had to go behind the bunks.
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Was the zero defects of the 1990s merely the unofficial resurrection of an old term?
I'd also bet the Pharaoh's Army had similar programs. So, allegedly, did a guy named Jean Martinet. I suspect the idea will be around far into the future -- even though it does not work and is counterproductive. Stupid, even.....
No defects are zeroized but some are Supersized...
Pete: Now that I think a bit, you're probably correct on Starry -- I believe it was one of the TRADOC deputies who pushed it and I know it was in the 74-75 (± a couple of years) period that it held sway. I can distinctly recall the ZD stickers Eighth Army put out last time I was in Korea, 75-76. Starry didn't get to TRADOC until after I retired in 77. Also agree that it was being derided by the early 80s. Shy Meyer hated the idea...
The term was used off and on for years in Army (and other) management circles but it didn't really get applied to operations in troop units until the mid-70s as I recall. That's the usage to which I thought you were referring and to which I referred though I didn't make that clear. :o
Slap: One of my wife's Uncles worked at MM Orlando for about 25 years including in that time frame. Agree that ZD in this respect started at Martin and that it preceded Crosby but it didn't hit Army units until the mid-70s -- and that was before Crosby is alleged to have introduced the phrase. :D
All those management Gurus essentially steal and package ideas...
jkm 101 fso and you have it right. It was and is to be applied to technical processes, not to things people do -- that vignette he cited displays exactly the mentality that was fostered by the 'concept' in the mid 70s. The Army picked up a lot of bad habits in Viet Nam and immediately thereafter. Too many of them are still with us. :mad:
Army Missile Command = Zero Defects
1964 US Army Missile Command
Title: Zero Defects
http://www.monmouth.army.mil/histori...e=Audio_Visual
Cain't watch on computer.....have to order it:(
That ain't units, Guys...
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dod's massive drive, known as zero defects, to re-emphasize pride in workmanship and to bolster quality achievements throughout american industry
McNamara'a whiz Kids promulgated it but it was aimed at DoD industrial efforts, it did not permeate the Army as the mid 70s re-issue did... :d :d
Nah, yo'sef. You're wrong again...
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Originally Posted by
slapout9
Nah that ain't it...... in 64 you hadn't been out of the Marines long enough to understand advanced Army thinking yet.:D
I'd been out of the Corps for over ten years by 64 and had been in the Army long enough to be a PSG E minus seven type. However, a little later, at the critical time in 1966, I was playing around in the SE Asia War Games and I sure missed whatever was important and going on at Ft. Jackson. Fortunately, I have never been stationed at Ft Jackson so I probably missed a lot of cutting edge stuff.
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A lot of folks have a problem with the fact that the Army won the Cold War and The Race To The Moon all by themselves!!!!been going downhill since then by listening to the wrong folks.
Yup, particularly those that are convinced that a poor exit will give you twists in a T-10. :D
Units, Slap, units. ATCs weren't units in the true sense of the word. Foat Bragg didn't pay much attention to Third Army. :D
Does Frank Borman know the Army did all that? Hmmm. Well, he may, he was a West Pointer... ;)
Er, no, you got that wrong too...
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Originally Posted by
slapout9
Thats exactly what I mean..........See how you began to excel with that good old Army training:D:D
I had as much responsibility and was more trusted as a Marine Corporal than I had/was as a PSG in the Army. Of course, I was far more trusted as a PSG than I was as a 1SG or a SGM -- or even as a mid to upper grade DAC. I know most of that less trust was due to passage of time and erosion of values plus general suspicion of DACs. Thus, I guess your comment; "A lot of folks have a problem with the fact that the Army won the Cold War and The Race To The Moon all by themselves!!!!been going downhill since then by listening to the wrong folks." is correct. Question is who were and are they listening to... :confused: :wry:
Brim? You mean the sides, right...
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Originally Posted by
Pete
With that having been said, what I want to know is whether Ken wore his Ridgeway cap with the brim stiffened or natural and wrinkled.
It wasn't really a Ridgeway cap and few in the Army called it that, it was a Lousville Spring Up (LINK) (well ,the good ones were, anyway). In the linked page, the two MPs in the top picture have Spring Ups; the one with the silver leaf is a Spring Up while the guys loading the truck in the bottom pic have stiffened field Caps.
Lot of people made fun of it but it was about the only headgear ever worn by the US Army that wasn't copied from someone else. It was a pain to wear and carry regardless of the web page's contention it was popular; that was sort of a mixed bag... :wry:
The original field cap which Ridgeway and the whole Army wore was worn 'natural and wrinkled' -- sort of; people applied their own mutations which is why Ridgeway wanted something done to improve uniformity and appearance (proving even the really good Generals can get wild hairs about inconsequential stuff...). The first fix was a flattened and folded newspaper or manila folder; the second was a plastic stiffener which cost $.35. Then came the Spring Ups. Of course, in Airborne units, even that wasn't enough so you had a plastic stiffener in your Spring Up and then shrunk the fabric so it was perfectly straight and unwrinkled... :rolleyes:
The sacrifices one makes for ones country... :D
Wasn't that PRC 77 the radio that replaced the PRC 25 that
replaced the PRC 8/9/10 that replaced the SCR 300 I used in Korea? Where I also used an '03A1 with a star gauged barrel and a 7.8 power Unertl scope, much less an M1. Also carried occasionally a BAR that fired semi-auto (will reveal secret to that for a small fee)... :D
Note that Slap still believes all that foolishness they told him in Jump School in an effort to slow jumpers down prevent run out, high speed exit jumps which increase the possibility of hung jumpers -- that was bad juju for the boys in the Black hats who had a bunch of peacetime safety constraints. :D
I didn't get twists after I discovered that keeping your Static Line UNtwisted was the key to keeping your chute untwisted. Body position and exit have almost nothing to do with it. If they did, you'd never see twists on a helicopter jump -- but you do... ;)
It's probably noteworthy that the old 101st Jump School at Campbell which normally conducted a Benning-like three week jump School ran two Wing awarding courses with three jumps instead of five and of only four total days back to back during the Lebanon crisis of '58. The Benning course is as long and dumb as it is in order to justify Instructor Contact Hours (ICH) which the Staffing guides use to determine the manning for TRADOC and Division / Post Schools. Said ICH are the real reason most Army schools cram a 40 hour course into three to four weeks...
Solution to that problem is to do away with those really dumb staffing guides which are primarily job justification booklets for manpower survey teams. Just eliminating that staffing criteria and the survey teams can reduce the cost of training and that saving can be applied to better, outcome based training.
THEY say a lot of things -- mostly garbage.
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Originally Posted by
slapout9
:D:D Good MoJo beats bad juju..... what is that they say about you cain't teach an old dog new tricks?
No body at Benning ever had good mojo in my experience given half dozen each TDY trips and schools there... :rolleyes:
Only good thing at Benning is the Cafeteria in Building 4 where you are guaranteed to run across some folks you know...
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82nd ran a jump school too....stopped sometime in 60's.....still had the old 40 foot towers down the street from 2/504 when I was there.
THEY shut it and the 101st BAC down in 1962 and sent everyone to Benning for the greater glory of TIS.
Uh, them was 34 foot Towers, ol' Dawg. I done tole you a hunnert and fifty million times not to exaggerate.. ;)
Uh, that you could fire at some one or some thing without giving
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Originally Posted by
Pete
What would be the point of having a BAR that fires in the semiautomatic mode? An M1 would would be lighter to carry around.
away the fact you had an automatic weapon. As issued, the BAR had a slow rate (~350 rpm) and a fast rate (~550 rpm), you could easily modify it to keep the fast rate and change the slow rate to semi-auto. Most Marines did that, most in the Army did not, relying on trigger manipulation to crank off a single round to avoid disclosing the auto capability from defensive positions, particularly at night when the BAR man might be the only one that saw something. Trigger manipulation worked but it wasn't reliable and you could inadvertently crank off two or three rounds and give your location away, particularly if you were dead tired.
Yep, M1 is half the weight. However, it's an absolute bear to modify it to fire full auto -- and then you only have eight rounds (unless you go the BM 59 route, hard to do in most units without a machine shop...) ;)