Articles by CBAssociates

Published, Newspapers and Technology, April 2000

Close Your Eyes And Imagine The Future

The world is getting smaller. Does anyone doubt that this true?

I am not sure that a proper historian would agree with my simplistic view, but I believe the advent of two things are making this a reality: speed and lower costs.

For example, faster transportation from high-speed ships to jet airplanes can get people to where they are going more rapidly. In addition, it has become apparent that lower costs have taken international travel out of the exclusive realm of the rich. I can now fly to Europe for less than I can fly to the West Coast and in about the same amount time.

The increase in the speed of communication from mail to telegraph, to satellite phones to the Internet, has been amazing. I communicate with folks in Germany via the Internet, which is just as fast as communicating with people in Denver with the added bonus of no additional charge.

From my perspective, designing buildings requires coordinating designs from equipment suppliers. This used to require air expressing prints or disks. Now they come across the Internet, fast and free. What could be better than fast and free?

One of the elements without the other does not really shrink the world to my way of thinking. Put the two together and we have a borderless business environment. A global village, as one author coined the expression.

When the distance is reduced, people tend to influence each other and adopt, for better or worst, customs of the other. What country does not think Levi's are pretty neat. We tend to look for the best in other customs to incorporate into our own lifestyles.

Europe is experiencing a growth in preprints because country borders have become irrelevant for travel. Europeans can cross country borders like Americans cross state lines. What better example is there for incorporating other customs than the melting pot aspect of the United States.

Europe is trying to set rules for every aspect of the work environment using the Common Market as the vehicle. This, in some cases, means that the social cost of hiring a person is getting more expensive. Europe and Japan have been unique due to the high cost they pay that does not relate to production. Six weeks of vacation and other time off is a pretty heavy cost to pay, from the American perspective, for a starting employee.

This high social cost, and the shortage of employees, has caused the Europeans to invest in more automation than we would think is cost justified. Like the Japanese, they place a high value on avoiding bringing on additional employees.

The new printing plants built in the former East Germany area, even though there is a ready supply of labor, are utilizing a high-level of automation. We visited a plant that had 13 reels running at 70,000 copies per hour. There was only one person in the reel room and he was reading a magazine. He was kind enough to offer to turn the lights on in the lay down area so we could see the cranes moving the paper rolls. They worked so well it was not necessary for the employee to oversee the equipment.

In Japan, there are mailrooms after mailrooms that do not require people attending the lines as they can automatically strip product flat down to one paper. At the largest newspaper in Switzerland we did not see a sole in the mailroom while it was pumping out individually addressed bundles at top press speed.

Employee avoidance is a strong influence in European automation decisions.

Well, it seems the world is getting smaller and as time passes, we will be adopting some of the same philosophies. What are the drivers? One is that there is a shortage of employees to hire, which means managers cannot be assured of controlling their production.

The new kicker is OSHA. They have signaled very clearly that they are going to take a new approach to enforcing safe environments. A recent proposed interpretation, that was withdrawn after the business community came down on the concept, would have made the environment of people working at home the responsibility of the employer.

The current proposal out for review seems to take the approach that if there is a reportable injury such as a back problem then the employer is assumed to not have a proper safety program. They then have the responsibility to implement one immediately. Guilty without trial is the new approach. In addition, they seem to believe they have the right to set the rate of pay an employee receives when off work. Some countries in Europe do this. Wonder where they got the idea?

This new approach is not a great deal different than the old method the IRS used to enforce their claims when they seized assets without trial.

During a presentation at the recent SuperConference, at the packaging session, I asked the attendees to close their eyes and count to five before opening. After they were awake, I asked them how many people they saw in the packaging center of the future.

Sure that cannot be done now, but it is the vision for the future. In addition to traditional cost justifications, we will embrace automation to avoid hiring employees due to the labor shortage and to avoid potential social costs that could be extreme.

In the meantime, we will have to add simple work aids and lower levels of automation to limit the liabilities and to control our ability to publish in the manner required to meet marketing needs.

Close your eyes and see the future.

[HOME]