> He obviously did not understand what his job as a manager is about.
> Why on earth would a manager be allowed to set tolerances like how you describe, tool or no tool?
He's not the expert in the field, I am. Normally, I would have vetted the work orders and fixed it before hand. This is similar to managers in the software world, where the team lead or senior engineer would say," No, we won't do that, it's a bad idea". He never should have been exposed to an option that could screw everything up so badly, but I mistakenly left it on the form. He was just trying to fix what he perceived as a potential problem. He was used to making small changes to work orders to save money or get a more refined product.
The biggest problem with our company's structure is that the operators, for whatever BS org reason, don't have the "pay grade" to tell him to pound sand. Managers need to sit below engineers, in my opinion.
> you must be measured like crazy - set goals based on metrics that will push things in a direction you see effective.
In my sector of manufacturing, margins are king (regardless of locale). If you can cut 10 seconds from an operation, or find a tool that lasts 20% longer, you can save tens of thousands of dollars a year, so we track everything.