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Inefficiency at universities

Euchale

Crazy German Guy
Since Tr1age said that people are not ranting enough, here is my Rant-thread Nr.1

There is a huge amount of money wasted in the group that I work. It all revolves around a special kind of machine, called a sorter, that only a handful of people can use. Now what is it about:
There is a core facility that gives people who don´t have that machine the option that the sorter will be taken care of for them. They just bring me what they want to be sorted and can just pick up the "finished product" after it is done. This costs money, but it´s a reasonable rate (the machine costs 500k-600k when buying + a yearly maintenance plan somewhere in the 10k, and usage of the machine costs 80 bucks per hour).
Now there are 4 machines in this core, and realistically one person can use 2-3 of them at the same time, if they are in the same room. Due to politics the machines are spread all of the university, and since there is only 1 person employed on this position, you can only sort at 1 or sometimes 2 at the same time. The other 2 machines are ALWAYS unused.
Now every machine belongs to an institute as well, who has somebody employed taking care of the sortings for that institute. I´m one of those guys. Since the person left that was responsible for the core, I´m taking the core sort over.
Now I´ve seen this inefficiency (coupled with some people only wanting to sort at one machine and not the other), and I stated to my boss, that it would make much more sense, if we could put all machines together, because right now, the core is actually costing money, instead of making some.
He didn´t care and said:"That will not be possible, as each machine belongs to an institute and since these machines are so expensive, they don´t want to give it away."
So yeah, it kinda sucks. Especially because all the additional work has to be done by me.
The only good part is, that I can finally take my vacation, that has been postponed for the last 4 months.
 
Sounds like someone went to the GM school of mismanagement.

Small time people are more concerned with not having one than what that thing can do.
Unfortunately that story of management, appropriation, and use is way way too common, in every industry.

I really hope that you are not working at a school of management...
 
Sounds like someone went to the GM school of mismanagement.

Small time people are more concerned with not having one than what that thing can do.
Unfortunately that story of management, appropriation, and use is way way too common, in every industry.

I really hope that you are not working at a school of management...


The problem here is very simple. There are people that are good in management and people that are good in science. Most of the time, if you have one, you don´t have the other. Since most bosses of Institutes here are Scientists, they don´t necessarily are the best at management. Additionally you have the problem, that most people that work in science don´t do it because of money, but because of prestige. So a loss of money is not counted as bad as a loss of authority (by agreeing to something that doesn´t directly benefit you).
 
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