Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Observations:
• the walking speed of individuals fluctuate
• All may have the same average walking speed,
but gaps continue to lengthen, why?
• There is no limit to how much an individual can
slow down, but your top speed is dependent on
the person in front.
• Fluctuations are accumulating over time, and
the slow fluctuations tend to accumulate faster
because they are not limited like the fast ones.
The Goal
Boy scout hike –> Manufacturing Plant
Observations:
• Each boy is an operation
• The product is “walk the trail”
• Each boy/operation is dependent on the one in front.
• A “sale” is when the last operation/boy walks the trail.
• Throughput is the rate at which the last person walks the
trail.
• Operating expense is the energy output of each boy.
• Inventory (material inside the plant) is the distance
between the first and last boy.
• Fluctuations in operating speed is causing inventory to
increase and causing throughput to decrease. Attempting
to reduce gaps is increasing operating expense.
The Goal
Play the matches game?
Expectation:
Realization:
Definition:
Bottleneck – any resource whose capacity is equal to or less
than the demand placed upon it.
Non-bottleneck – any resource whose capacity is greater
than the demand placed upon it.
The Goal
Jonah then suggests balancing the flow of product through
the plant with demand from the market. Not to balance
the capacities of operations with demand.
A. Go out on the floor and find the operation with the most
inventory sitting in front of it.
Q. Does this scheduling system work (e.g. get late jobs completed
while always keeping bottleneck running)?
A. No, because the late job components are not always waiting in
front of the bottleneck machines.
1) Y X 3) Y A 4) Y Product A
2) X Y X S X Product B
S
E
M
B
L
Y
The Goal
Jonah believes the “new bottlenecks” are not real bottlenecks, but
self-created bottlenecks. Why?
Lesson: Do not try to make non-bottlenecks work all the time. They
should be idle some of the time!
The Goal
So how do you go about fixing the problem of keeping the non-
bottleneck machines working at the same rate as the
bottleneck?
Recall the boy scout hike: Herbie is in the middle of the line and
cannot be moved, so how do you keep the kid in the front
walking at the same pace as Herbie?
Communicate release
• WIP is down.
• Revenues are up.
• Efficiencies dropped initially, but have come back up.
• The backlog of orders is completely gone (satisfied customers).
• Happy
• Somewhat skeptical success will last
• Wants 15% more revenue next month!!
The Goal
In order to improve by another 15% what does Jonah suggest as the
“next logical step”?
Process Time Setup Time Queue Time Wait for Assembly Time
• Increased sales!!
• The bottleneck had moved to customer demand.
Quick response on promised due dates should
translate to a competitive advantage.
The Goal
Everything is going good now except it looks like part costs are
going up. However, in reality all costs have gone down. How
can this be?
Cost per part has risen because more setups are occurring because
of smaller batch sizes.
Answer: Inventory
• Worker efficiency
• Optimal batch size
• Releasing work to the floor to keep people busy
• Accounting rules
The Goal
Why Alex’s plant was successful:
Change in Focus
from the “cost world” to the “throughput world”
Cost Throughput
Throughput Inventory
Inventory Cost
The Goal
What process did they use to shift their focus to the “throughput
world”?
The Theory of Constraints
What approach did Jonah use to help Alex and the plant succeed?
Find the answers/solutions by asking questions, the Socratic
approach. Let others convince themselves of the answers,
don’t just give it to them.