THE SPECIALIST WITH A UNIVERSAL MINDANDREW VAZSONYI, Feature Editor, McLaren School of Business, University of San FranciscoPOM VERSUS CREATIVITY
by Andrew Vazsonyi, McLaren School of Business,
On the one hand, we are urged to make production and operations management more scientific. On the other hand, we are asked to reject rationality, become creative like poets, bards, story tellers, and myth makers. Many people claim to lose creativity, or at least fear loss of creativity, by studying quantitative techniques. They go along with the poet Walt Whitman:
We do have an agonizing problem: how to unite rationality and intuition. Recently, I took a course of study in creativity training and want to share my findings with you. Instead of taking a rational approach to describe my findings, in the style of creativity, I present a metaphor. But before I start typing, let me turn on my hi-fi set and play Cesar Franks's PiŠce Heroique. The Setting The UNEEDA Corporation is a manufacturer of outdoor clothing made of colorful nylon cloth. George Smyth, president of the corporation, is a great believer of Total Quality Control, and has an ongoing fight against waste. The principal target is the elimination of scrap, and UNEEDA has elaborate cutting procedures to minimize scrap. A consultant, Tom Harvey, recommends a sophisticated computer program to improve the cutting system. The cost of the computer system will be amortized in three years, and then the significant savings will be all gravy. Smyth is inclined to proceed to install the system. However, a Young Turk, Amy Rogo, has some different ideas. Enter the Creative Type Amy Rogo does not carry much weight in the corporation; she knows very little about production, nothing about Total Quality Control. In fact she majored in psychology, and so decides to apply her creativity training and her "secrete" creativity programs on her PC, to brainstorm the problem and to create scenarios. Her approach is "lateral" and random (De Bono). Her training in cognitive psychology tells her that means-ends analysis (Simon) is often useful as a starting point. What does UNEEDA really want? How can she turn the goal of reducing scrap upside-down, she muses? Of course, they want to increase profit. The problem is not the scrap but how to increase profit. One way to do this is to decrease cost. Is there another way? Who cares about total quality control, whatever that may be. Then she thinks of the Reversal method of creativity (De Bono.) She writes down: Increase scrap. It makes no sense, but she is in what Osborn calls the Green Mindset, and continues her excursion (Prince). Another heuristic is to think of a metaphor from another world (Prince). She runs through her creativity program, but nothing seems to click. Anyway, she archives the track record for later use, for incubation. The computer program asks her to list some other problems she is thinking about. Well, what about dinner? That won't be a problem She has odds-and-ends from the last three days. Plenty of scraps of food left over to put together for tonight's dinner. Her Thesaurus program flashes up the word waste. Her Quotations program goes to the Bible and quotes Matthew 26:8. To what purpose is this waste? And the word redeem from the poet Thomas Eliot (Ash-Wednesday):
The time. Redeem The unread vision in the higher dream While jeweled unicorn draw by the gilded hearse Then again, how about applying the Crovitz relational algorithm to the problem. There are two goals: Increase profit and/or decrease costs. Amy also considers two entities: jackets and scrap. The Crovitz algorithm sandwiches these words between such relational words as about, across, after, and so on. (Column I in Exhibit 1 shows more of the relations recommended by Crovitz.) To make the algorithm practical she writes a simple Visual Basic program in Excel to generate random, alternate goals and approaches. Exhibit 1 shows one of the Excel runs which displays 10 alternatives Crovitz, ``sandwiched'', in rows 5 to 14. The ``meat'' between jackets and scrap is one the Crovitz relations. After running the program a few dozen times and looking at a lot of garbage, Amy archives three combinations she copies from Rows 16 to 18:
Jackets from Scrap Jackets through Scrap What can these mean? She shrugs her shoulders. Who knows? She looks at her watch. Time to go home. Well, she did not get anywhere, but has some junk archived for incubation. She goes home and forgets the problem. The Vision Next morning, awakening, the spark comes to her in a flash:
That is the way she made dinner. The Crovitz algorithm says make jackets from scrap. Jacket after scrap. When Amy goes to the office she says nothing. She decides tb wait for the Wednesday weekly staff meeting, and anyway she wants a longer incubation period. Wednesday she is ready to spring the idea on the unsuspecting victims. She was not told that the consultant, Tom Harvey, was invited and the whole meeting focuses on how well the computer program will work. Somehow, the decision was already tacitly made to go ahead with the computer installation. This puts Amy in a really embarrassing position. When President Smyth asks for comments and suggestions, she raises the issue as to whether there is really a need to reduce scrap. Her question confirms the generally shared view that she is crazy. The manager of production smiles and asks ironically what she has in mind (if anything). Smyth just frowns. So Amy explains her idea, but the manager of production just shrugs it off. (He has what Osborn calls a Red Mindset.) But the manager of marketing loves the idea. She asks how Amy hit upon it? Very creative type! The Upshot Marketing makes a survey and finds that the colorful jackets will sell well, and at a premium price. The costly computer effort of minimizing scrap is scrapped, scrap increases, costs decrease, and UNEEDA realizes a significant increase in market share and profit by the sale of the new jackets. Smyth transfers Amy to Marketing. They are more receptive to her ``crazy'' ideas than Production. Comments I find that my digging into creativity training has had quite an impact on me. The techniques do not create new ideas; they facilitate the generation of creative ideas. I suggest you try it yourself. Here is a list of references as a starter. References [1] Crovitz, H. F., Galton's Walk, Harper and Row, 1970. [2] De Bono, Edward, Lateral Thinking: Creativity Step by Step, Harper Colophon Books, 1970. [3] Prince G. M. The Practice of Creativity, Harper & Row, 1970. [4] Osborn, A. F., Applied Imagination: Principles and Procedures of Creative Problem-Solving, 3rd revised edition, Creative Education Foundation, Buffalo, NY, 1993. [5] Simon, H. A., The Sciences of the Artificial, 2nd edition, The MIT Press, 1984. [6] VanGundy, A. B., Idea Power: Techniques & Resources to Unleash the Creativity in Your Organization, American Management Association, New York, NY, 1992. (It includes an annotated reference to 47 computerized programs for creativity.)
Dr. Andrew Vazsonyi
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