Work Improvement Teams

According to TalkingCock.com (www.talkingcock.com) it means: a Waste of Individual Time.

Which is very true.

The whole WITs thing is full of flaws on its own. It contradicts the principle of "improvement" when there are problems that we cannot solve. It's not that we've run out of wits but the solutions that we provide are denied acceptance simply because the rule book says that this and that are now allowed. For example, one cannot do anything to the tank, besides painting a few words on its surface.

Some of the good ideas are rejected only because it has already been implemented. But do we know? No. Because for some reason or another, they do not seem to be applied seem to be across the board. Or perhaps we are rather new in the army, so we do not know the workings of the other formations.

Some ideas are shot down because of the red tape involved in procedures. For instance, Sergeant Dexter comes up with the idea of having the telephone numbers of the medical centres and the nearest hospital painted onto the safety sign that is hung on the land rover, so that anybody can call the place in case the medic or the officers are not around and are busy with the victim. The point that all of us agree with: the few vital seconds can save a life. But the big shots in the company say no. The officers are supposed to know the numbers by heart. Besides, not everybody can call the medical centre. So the idea is: we're supposed to look for the officer, tell him to call the medical centre, wait for help, and let the victim wait there in suffering. Well done. You might as well let the victim die. Then the SAF will suffer another hole through its armour with ammunition from the public.

Some problems are simply unsolvable - at least on the side of our camp, and our company. We have a problem with dogs coming in to disturb our rubbish bins at night. By the next morning, there is a strew of litter all over the ground. The solution? Latches on the rubbish bin covers. No, say the big shots. There are two solutions: stop feeding the dogs, or catch the dogs. Now, the thing is, the dogs are being fed by the people at the armour regiments. These dogs habituate at the engineers' area, so besides going to the armour side, they will obviously have the same thinking that the engineers will also feed them like what the armour people do. And you can't catch all the dogs because there is a colony of them, with some even capable of leaving the camp area and wandering outfield.

Our platoon faces the worst-case scenario: entering the war room with eight ideas, only to have ALL of them shot down.

I remember going in there feeling rather relaxed and quite confident that we had quite good ideas. If we did this well, we would be free to enjoy ourselves for the rest of the day and not come back tomorrow.

Sergeant Dexter is the first to go up with his idea of the safety sign, which I have described above. He sticks the huge sheet of paper with the idea written on it onto the wall, and begins.

When he finishes, the room goes silent as the audience - the OC, the 2IC, the CSM, the PCs and the PS's - ponder over the idea. We presenters are sitting - or rather, standing there, for Sergeant Dexter and those who cannot find a place to sit - in the very same room but with no clue what the others are thinking. It's either one option: accepted or rejected.

It is rejected. The reason has been given in an earlier paragraph about this idea.

The next, the third, all rejected. The third one, about a modified jerry can, is the fastest to be canned. Mingjie raises the paper to view its contents; the inversion on the other side of the paper is caught by Doraemon, who is sitting across the room. "I thought I said no to this one earlier this morning," he says plainly. Apparently he had made his rounds while we were writing and drawing up the posters before lunch.

Now it is my turn to present the fourth idea - a modified SAF trolley. We've lost three, now I must fight to get this idea accepted. I explain that the woes of the current trolley. The trolley is a necessity in moving a large amount of things around the unit and the camp. We use it to ship rubbish to the dump which is almost a five-minute walk from our company line. We use it to transport items to the tank park, or to other buildings within the unit. The roads are badly weathered and roughed-up; vibrations are huge as the trolley trundles over the uneven surface. To minimise the risk of dropping things on the floor while using the trolley, why not install straps onto the trolley to secure our things in place before we push off?

Suddenly, I'm fired with a salvo of questions about what makes a quality project; what statistics there are to prove that this project is worthy to be channelled to those people up there . . . questions, questions, questions that send me into a blur . . . I feel like I've just been massacred by a firing squad. At that very moment, I just feel like running away and take a breather . . . it's too hot inside, even with the windows opened; the air too suffocating.

As the story goes, everything is finished by the time we finish. We trudge down the stairs, disheartened and very anxious because we have to come up with a whole new set of five required ideas. No, eight, in the event that there are rejections.

The whole platoon is mobilised (only the presenters remain at the chalet) from all their activities for a crisis meeting, whose agenda is to come up with as many ideas as possible. Most people are quite brain-dead from creative thinking for the past week. Brain-writing day last week was the most fruitful, with a hundred-and-sixty ideas churned out, as I mentioned in my previous post. However, only three are found to be the most "sensible". Yesterday, we came up with another five or six more "sensible" ideas. Today, all of them are gone. It means starting all over again. Hear that: all over again.

As usual, tempers flare. While I read the comments given by those at the top, some people begin to cut me in halfway and demand why the commanders made such remarks, and why didn't we argue in this or that direction. The presenters feel quite irritated that we have to be caught in crossfire again. "Why didn't you go up and present with us earlier? Now you come and tell us all these, it's too late. The only thing we can do now is to think up of new ideas, or at least re-consider the arguments to save the rejected projects."

All throughout dinner the thinking continues. An hour before the next round of presentations, Sergeant Goh consolidates the accepted ideas that had been thought up within the last three hours, and hustles a few of us up to the room to showcase.

All-in-all, the second round is a better experience. Two ideas are accepted, but not wholly accepted: Medic Tu's Medic Man-pack, which the OC and CSM ask for a model. A communications helmet rack in the tank, which teeters on the edge of welcome and goodbye.

This time round, the PS's and the PCs had the lesser tendency to veto; rather they tried to support the ideas, because seriously if they killed whatever was being showcased during the second round, they might as well end up with nothing. They tried to speak up for us, and we are grateful for that. Only the stupid Garfield keeps trying to kill ideas by demanding statistics and all that shit, which Sergeant Goh attempts to counteract.

Apparently we have been lied to, because five from each platoon is not really the required sum: that was made up to force us to think of ideas. Anyway we get our one-day off the next day, which is a blessing already.

Talk about booking out from the chalet . . .