Monumental work cockups
Discussion
The funny thing about SAP (or any ERP) is people misunderstand it.
There is no such thing as an IT project (arguable, but..) there are business projects with IT programmes attached.
Too many people blame the "tool" rather than look at the business process (which might actually be inefficient), the organization (ditto) AND the underlying IT process/model that supports it.
I'm no major fan of SAP, but the reason it often causes a lot of tension to business stakeholders is that it is much easier to blame IT than take a proper approach...
There is no such thing as an IT project (arguable, but..) there are business projects with IT programmes attached.
Too many people blame the "tool" rather than look at the business process (which might actually be inefficient), the organization (ditto) AND the underlying IT process/model that supports it.
I'm no major fan of SAP, but the reason it often causes a lot of tension to business stakeholders is that it is much easier to blame IT than take a proper approach...
Vaud said:
Too many people blame the "tool" rather than look at the business process (which might actually be inefficient), the organization (ditto) AND the underlying IT process/model that supports it.
SAP however is very non-intuitive, so despite being powerful enough to do most things involved in running a company, few people actually know how to do it.Some years ago I got asked to map our business process as a UK arm of a reasonable sized multinational IT company. I found that project managers were entering all their details in to SAP, running off the reports, and then sending them up to the next level of management, who would enter all the details in SAP, run off the reports, and send it all up to the next level... Basically we were running 2 parallel systems, with the majority of people working off paper and excel reports because they didn't know how to use SAP.
Oh and one of the companies offerings (though not our department) was SAP consultancy
RizzoTheRat said:
SAP however is very non-intuitive, so despite being powerful enough to do most things involved in running a company, few people actually know how to do it.
It is just a database after all, and the limitations are effectively the imagination of the company (and how much money they want to throw at it).Chris_H said:
Halmyre said:
Aargh! SAP! (makes sign of cross, waves bulb of garlic) When they installed it at my work it rapidly became known as 'Stop All Production'. I've no doubt it's a very powerful tool but using it is a total PITA. Luckily my exposure to it is mostly recording my hours worked, and the occasional expenses claim - occasional enough that every time I use it I'm basically starting from scratch.
redddraggon said:
Hate SAP with a passion. It's the least intuitive bit of software I've ever used.
I absolutely loved SAP. It enabled me to retire at 53 as I was lucky enough to fall into it at the peak!!! Fortunately I never had to use it as a 'user'.
When I worked at Tesco circa 2006/2007, we had a shed load of then brand new £400 PS3 consoles delivered that mysteriously never made the shop floor. I remember seeing them in an unsecure cage in the warehouse, slightly surprised as they were very expensive. I believe I ensured my concerns were recognised by a manager, but being a lowly assistant they never had time for us. There was a big commotion a couple of days later when they went missing. At the time the store was undergoing a substantial refit, and security wasn't tight. It's fairly obvious what happened but the "mystery" was never solved as far as I know.
Back in 2000, working for a company that put ticketing and info solutions into cinemas.
A delivery of 12 50" plasma screens (very expensive and rare in 2000) were being delivered by our company to a cinema in the east end of London..... to be used as info screens....
Only two guys in the truck, and these things were heavy.....
Parked the truck up a the goods in area, then had to hand carry the screens to the cinema itself. Delivered one screen to the correct floor in the complex, the two guys went back to pick up another.... it took no more than 10 minutes, but the van was now empty....
All 11 gone.
All future deliveries were made by three guys, one to stay with the van.
A delivery of 12 50" plasma screens (very expensive and rare in 2000) were being delivered by our company to a cinema in the east end of London..... to be used as info screens....
Only two guys in the truck, and these things were heavy.....
Parked the truck up a the goods in area, then had to hand carry the screens to the cinema itself. Delivered one screen to the correct floor in the complex, the two guys went back to pick up another.... it took no more than 10 minutes, but the van was now empty....
All 11 gone.
All future deliveries were made by three guys, one to stay with the van.
316Mining said:
Back in 2000, working for a company that put ticketing and info solutions into cinemas.
A delivery of 12 50" plasma screens (very expensive and rare in 2000) were being delivered by our company to a cinema in the east end of London..... to be used as info screens....
Only two guys in the truck, and these things were heavy.....
Parked the truck up a the goods in area, then had to hand carry the screens to the cinema itself. Delivered one screen to the correct floor in the complex, the two guys went back to pick up another.... it took no more than 10 minutes, but the van was now empty....
All 11 gone.
All future deliveries were made by three guys, one to stay with the van.
sA delivery of 12 50" plasma screens (very expensive and rare in 2000) were being delivered by our company to a cinema in the east end of London..... to be used as info screens....
Only two guys in the truck, and these things were heavy.....
Parked the truck up a the goods in area, then had to hand carry the screens to the cinema itself. Delivered one screen to the correct floor in the complex, the two guys went back to pick up another.... it took no more than 10 minutes, but the van was now empty....
All 11 gone.
All future deliveries were made by three guys, one to stay with the van.
t the bed. Sounds like someone knew that it was coming.Tonsko said:
316Mining said:
Back in 2000, working for a company that put ticketing and info solutions into cinemas.
A delivery of 12 50" plasma screens (very expensive and rare in 2000) were being delivered by our company to a cinema in the east end of London..... to be used as info screens....
Only two guys in the truck, and these things were heavy.....
Parked the truck up a the goods in area, then had to hand carry the screens to the cinema itself. Delivered one screen to the correct floor in the complex, the two guys went back to pick up another.... it took no more than 10 minutes, but the van was now empty....
All 11 gone.
All future deliveries were made by three guys, one to stay with the van.
sA delivery of 12 50" plasma screens (very expensive and rare in 2000) were being delivered by our company to a cinema in the east end of London..... to be used as info screens....
Only two guys in the truck, and these things were heavy.....
Parked the truck up a the goods in area, then had to hand carry the screens to the cinema itself. Delivered one screen to the correct floor in the complex, the two guys went back to pick up another.... it took no more than 10 minutes, but the van was now empty....
All 11 gone.
All future deliveries were made by three guys, one to stay with the van.
t the bed. Sounds like someone knew that it was coming.The van driver and his accomplice's families both benefitted from a new telly...
C.A.R. said:
Tonsko said:
316Mining said:
Back in 2000, working for a company that put ticketing and info solutions into cinemas.
A delivery of 12 50" plasma screens (very expensive and rare in 2000) were being delivered by our company to a cinema in the east end of London..... to be used as info screens....
Only two guys in the truck, and these things were heavy.....
Parked the truck up a the goods in area, then had to hand carry the screens to the cinema itself. Delivered one screen to the correct floor in the complex, the two guys went back to pick up another.... it took no more than 10 minutes, but the van was now empty....
All 11 gone.
All future deliveries were made by three guys, one to stay with the van.
sA delivery of 12 50" plasma screens (very expensive and rare in 2000) were being delivered by our company to a cinema in the east end of London..... to be used as info screens....
Only two guys in the truck, and these things were heavy.....
Parked the truck up a the goods in area, then had to hand carry the screens to the cinema itself. Delivered one screen to the correct floor in the complex, the two guys went back to pick up another.... it took no more than 10 minutes, but the van was now empty....
All 11 gone.
All future deliveries were made by three guys, one to stay with the van.
t the bed. Sounds like someone knew that it was coming.The van driver and his accomplice's families both benefitted from a new telly...
I remember a German company that were doing the sound system for the 12 cinema screens had some components lifted also.
They offered a £50k reward for its safe return on a "no questions asked" basis. Don't think it came back, despite them pointing out that its only real use was in a multiplex cinema. Not suitable for a Peckham home cinema solution.
sparks_E39 said:
When I worked at Tesco circa 2006/2007, we had a shed load of then brand new £400 PS3 consoles delivered that mysteriously never made the shop floor. I remember seeing them in an unsecure cage in the warehouse, slightly surprised as they were very expensive. I believe I ensured my concerns were recognised by a manager, but being a lowly assistant they never had time for us. There was a big commotion a couple of days later when they went missing. At the time the store was undergoing a substantial refit, and security wasn't tight. It's fairly obvious what happened but the "mystery" was never solved as far as I know.
Similar thing happened at a place I worked at. Several brand new (multi £thousand) printers got delivered to site.They stood for a few days in a corridor still in their original unopened boxes awaiting deployment - then one day just disappeared.
Apparently they got 'cleaned' away as apparently, somebody thought they were rubbish to be binned.
Normally large items like this would go into a skip round the back of the building so there would have been an opportunity to retrieve them - except this 'cleaning' happened to coincide with the day the skip was collected.
Edited by Moonhawk on Monday 21st November 13:59
Not that monumental but...
I sell indoor plants that I buy from Holland.
For the last 14 years I have been updating a huge Excel document with the most recent price I've paid of each species in all size/shape variants. It's basically essential to my quoting process.
My boss has just deleted it from the work server "while tidying up".
It's lucky I like her.
I sell indoor plants that I buy from Holland.
For the last 14 years I have been updating a huge Excel document with the most recent price I've paid of each species in all size/shape variants. It's basically essential to my quoting process.
My boss has just deleted it from the work server "while tidying up".
It's lucky I like her.
RizzoTheRat said:
Vaud said:
Too many people blame the "tool" rather than look at the business process (which might actually be inefficient), the organization (ditto) AND the underlying IT process/model that supports it.
SAP however is very non-intuitive, so despite being powerful enough to do most things involved in running a company, few people actually know how to do it.The first time it was a decent install but the company didn't have a SAP training team or pay for SAP training - your predecessor / colleagues were supposed to train you, which of course never worked well.
The second time it was a cheap-and-nasty install as the Division GM was bonused on COST performance (!!!). So cheap and nasty that a £200m turnover division didn't even have a journal-upload tool - all journals were done manually and entered individually...
...better still, that company DID have a SAP team working for them (still no training though!), except the SAP Manager (lazy, smug, overpaid political gobs
te that he was) outsourced every single request to his mates on £1,400/day and they took ages to get anything done.I'd describe SAP as like Apple - the software forces you to do things the way it wants them done, regardless of whether that's the best / most logical way or not. As Rizzo says - it's powerful enough that it SHOULD be really good, but it rarely is because companies cut costs either on the installation or the (ongoing) training...
Johnnytheboy said:
Not that monumental but...
I sell indoor plants that I buy from Holland.
For the last 14 years I have been updating a huge Excel document with the most recent price I've paid of each species in all size/shape variants. It's basically essential to my quoting process.
My boss has just deleted it from the work server "while tidying up".
It's lucky I like her.
just restore it from your backups.I sell indoor plants that I buy from Holland.
For the last 14 years I have been updating a huge Excel document with the most recent price I've paid of each species in all size/shape variants. It's basically essential to my quoting process.
My boss has just deleted it from the work server "while tidying up".
It's lucky I like her.
I just nearly had a monumental cockup, 21k worth of materials ordered in the wrong colour. Luckily I'd noticed prior to materials going into manufacture! In my defence, the boss had raised a PO for the wrong colour, been discussing the wrong colour in meetings so I naturally ordered at that colour. I should have really double checked drawings which stated a completely different colour!
Nanook said:
Johnnytheboy said:
Not that monumental but...
I sell indoor plants that I buy from Holland.
For the last 14 years I have been updating a huge Excel document with the most recent price I've paid of each species in all size/shape variants. It's basically essential to my quoting process.
My boss has just deleted it from the work server "while tidying up".
It's lucky I like her.
Is this part of your work, or something you do on the side, but maintain during work hours?I sell indoor plants that I buy from Holland.
For the last 14 years I have been updating a huge Excel document with the most recent price I've paid of each species in all size/shape variants. It's basically essential to my quoting process.
My boss has just deleted it from the work server "while tidying up".
It's lucky I like her.
I'm currently watching one unfold, luckily nothing to do with me.
A colleague did not check her file. Said file was used to amend something, which was then signed off. We found out friday that said file was wrong, stock has been printed and delivered to the various sites it has to go to.
Because of this, we can't recover it. Myself and another experienced colleague tried every trick we know in our 20 years experience, and it wasn't happening. Said colleague is currently on a conference call with the delivery company trying to fudge some sort of solution together. I've made him 2 coffee's so far, he's been on the phone for 40 minutes.
The colleague who made the mistake isn't very bright tbh, I've picked up on a fair few mistakes whilst running her files internally, and have sent back every one due to issues. This time, it seems she thought she would bypass my safety net, and do the changes herself... she is being very quiet today. She was off on Friday, so rather than her trying to keep it quiet, the MD, department director, head of the department and myself/my colleague got involved, so no hiding from it now! I then found out this morning that this isnt the first big issue said colleague has made on this client, arguably our 4th biggest we work with, so we either hide it and hope, or come clean. Either way, I've heard figures of £80k being mooted as the end cost of all of this.
And all because someone sorted, then copied and pasted, rather than v-lookup and check with a simple pivot table before committing stuff!
A colleague did not check her file. Said file was used to amend something, which was then signed off. We found out friday that said file was wrong, stock has been printed and delivered to the various sites it has to go to.
Because of this, we can't recover it. Myself and another experienced colleague tried every trick we know in our 20 years experience, and it wasn't happening. Said colleague is currently on a conference call with the delivery company trying to fudge some sort of solution together. I've made him 2 coffee's so far, he's been on the phone for 40 minutes.
The colleague who made the mistake isn't very bright tbh, I've picked up on a fair few mistakes whilst running her files internally, and have sent back every one due to issues. This time, it seems she thought she would bypass my safety net, and do the changes herself... she is being very quiet today. She was off on Friday, so rather than her trying to keep it quiet, the MD, department director, head of the department and myself/my colleague got involved, so no hiding from it now! I then found out this morning that this isnt the first big issue said colleague has made on this client, arguably our 4th biggest we work with, so we either hide it and hope, or come clean. Either way, I've heard figures of £80k being mooted as the end cost of all of this.
And all because someone sorted, then copied and pasted, rather than v-lookup and check with a simple pivot table before committing stuff!
Thankfully no cockups in my current job but back in the day before law school I worked for a Ferrari dealership during the summer in the parts department and doing a bit of running around in a van.
On my last day I was asked to take a F360 gearbox back to Ferrari in Surrey and collect a new F430 front bumper. At the time it was the only F430 front bumper available anywhere in the world - and it had taken a lot of effort on our part to get one, and was being flown out to our customer in Dubai the next day day.
I arrived at HQ, looked at the shiny cars and was told that they couldn't take the gearbox back as someone hadn't completed the right paperwork. But they did give me the (completely unpackaged) F430 bumper to take back with me. For obvious reasons I didn't want to have both in the back of the van at the same time, especially as the bumper cost about £6k.
I only had a few bungee straps and an odd bit of rope with me so I tied the gearbox which was in a crate down as best I could at the back of the van and put the bumper at the front. On the way back that evening someone had a "wobble" in front of me, I had to effect an emergency stop and I will never forget the sound of the gearbox breaking free and ominously sliding forward towards the cab and smashing the new bumper into several bits. As that was my last day in any case I sheepishly handed the keys of the van back, never to be seen again.
On my last day I was asked to take a F360 gearbox back to Ferrari in Surrey and collect a new F430 front bumper. At the time it was the only F430 front bumper available anywhere in the world - and it had taken a lot of effort on our part to get one, and was being flown out to our customer in Dubai the next day day.
I arrived at HQ, looked at the shiny cars and was told that they couldn't take the gearbox back as someone hadn't completed the right paperwork. But they did give me the (completely unpackaged) F430 bumper to take back with me. For obvious reasons I didn't want to have both in the back of the van at the same time, especially as the bumper cost about £6k.
I only had a few bungee straps and an odd bit of rope with me so I tied the gearbox which was in a crate down as best I could at the back of the van and put the bumper at the front. On the way back that evening someone had a "wobble" in front of me, I had to effect an emergency stop and I will never forget the sound of the gearbox breaking free and ominously sliding forward towards the cab and smashing the new bumper into several bits. As that was my last day in any case I sheepishly handed the keys of the van back, never to be seen again.
Edited by Muncher on Tuesday 22 November 10:00
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