Many years ago, in the days before email, when Herschel users had problems I’d get in the car and pay them a visit. I had a call from one site where “Herschel wasn’t working properly anymore”, so off I went.
After a quick chat and a tour of their factory, it became pretty obvious they had little idea of how to use Herschel properly. We all sat down and I went through how they should structure their assemblies, use kit issue for some items, and backflush or bulk issue the rest. Then I explained how they could use the Plan module to control their ordering and the various ordering methods they could employ.
Before I started to show them how to set things up, I logged into Herschel and had a quick look around their data. I was a bit bemused to find it was all already on Herschel, almost exactly in line with what I’d suggested!
It turned out that Herschel had been working perfectly for several years, but had “broken” after they had fired Trevor. It was Trevor who had set up their data so beautifully and kept Herschel running so smoothly.
“Why did you get rid of Trevor?”, I asked.
“Because he just sat around fiddling on the computer and never did anything”, was their reply.
In 2017 we’ve had several support tickets where the root cause of the problem was the knowledge vacuum left behind when the person responsible for running Herschel moves on.
So, please, in 2018:
- DON’T FIRE YOUR TREVOR
- And if you do, make sure you get them to document how they manage Herschel before you put their possessions in a cardboard box.
