You Can’t KPI Chemistry

This story reminded me of something I experienced at the old place I used to work:

We did chemical analyses for other companies; one day, one of the instruments we used broke down (a normal occurrence since they were more or less kept running around the clock).

We notified higher management that we were down one machine and that without it, we were unable to run one of the classes of tests (ATM-test) that we normally did.

The answer we got amounted to “The Excel spreadsheet shows that we are not supposed to have any more machine malfunctions this month. By the way, pick up the pace, because it also shows that your department has been running behind on the ATM tests since yesterday!”

It took weeks before they realised that “Oh! They can’t run the tests unless we have the machine repaired!”

By the time we had the instrument running again, the backlog was nightmarish; of course, since we were able to run one fewer class of tests until the situation got sorted, the department was reprimanded because we showed lower productivity for those weeks.