Breaking Through To Flow

Description

Fire fighting is endemic in most companies. Not only does it result in reduced efficiency, it creates a blame culture – hardly the right basis for an organisation that wants to be effective in sustainable continuous improvement. Stability is a key requisite to achieve this yet if plans keep changing, how can one get stability? Of course this instability is blamed on the customer. After all they always seem to place orders different to the forecast – and at short notice. Or it is the fault of production. They never quite seem to produce just what was planned, resulting in the need to re-plan. But surely that is just because the materials needed to make the plan were not all available. Why not? The inventory data was not quite as accurate as we thought so not all the materials were actually in the warehouse, even though they were showing in the computer records. Plus the suppliers were late – again – in their deliveries. It seems that there are many reasons for the fire fighting. These reasons appear to be “facts of life” and are considered “normal”. It’s just the way things are and they can’t be changed.

This is the conventional view about supply chains. The workbook Breaking Through to Flow presents another view, one that is counter intuitive and flies in the face of this conventional thinking. Precisely because it is counter to conventional wisdom makes applying what is in the workbook difficult. It goes against the way the company has traditional operated. So applying flow logic is always going to be difficult at first.

There is a second issue. In most companies lean is seen primarily as a set of tools aimed at identifying and eliminating “waste”. It has been seen as generally a successful approach, though possibly hard at times to maintain the benefits as old habits return. People believe they understand and know what lean is all about. Unfortunately what they do not understand is “levelled production”, yet this is the foundation of the Toyota production system. It seems impossible to have levelled production if the demand is variable. In most companies it is rarely seriously considered as something that should be applied to the way they operate. “Lean is about waste elimination and we are doing that” is what one hears from management. They think they understand lean so are not open to hearing another interpretation of how lean can be implemented. Another obstacle in applying what is in the workbook “Breaking through to flow”.

This workshop is designed to help you use what is in the workbook. What do you need to do to be able to apply the logic of flow? To be able to create a stable plan that does not change frequently – despite what the customers demands are. How does one start to apply the steps of levelling? Who needs to be involved, how to precede, what are the criteria to consider when selecting a pilot? All questions this workshop will address. As well as the many other questions you are likely to have from reading the workbook and thinking about implementing what it says. Or perhaps having already tried to implement the ideas and run into some difficulties. The workshop is aimed at helping people in companies to apply the concepts covered in the workbook in their workplace – to bring the ideas into practical reality.