The Goal

142

work on time. By 8:30, Bob, Stacey, Lou, and Ralph are in my office, and we're talking about what happened yesterday. Today, I find them much more attentive. Maybe it's because they've seen the proof of the idea take place on their own turf, so to speak.

"This combination of dependency and fluctuations is what we're up against every day," I tell them. "I think it explains why we have so many late orders."

Lou and Ralph are examining the two charts we made yes- terday. "What would have happened if the second operation hadn't been a robot, if it had been some kind of job with people?" asks Lou.

"We would have had another set of statistical fluctuations to complicate things," I say. "Don't forget we only had two opera- tions here. You can imagine what happens when we've got de- pendency running through ten or fifteen operations, each with its own set of fluctuations, just to make one part. And some of our products involve hundreds of parts."

Stacey is troubled. She asks, "Then how can we ever control what's going on out there?"

I say, "That's the billion-dollar question: how can we control the fifty-thousand or-who knows?-maybe it's fifty-million vari- ables which exist in this plant?"

"We'd have to buy a new super computer just to keep track of all of them," says Ralph.

I say, "A new computer wouldn't save us. Data management alone isn't going to give us more control."

"What about longer lead times?" asks Bob.

"Oh, you really think longer lead time would have guaran- teed our ability to ship that order to Hilton Smyth's plant?" I ask him. "How long had we already known about that order before yesterday, Bob?"

Bob wiggles back and forth. "Hey, all I'm saying is that we'd have some slop in there to make up for the delays."

Then Stacey says, "Longer lead times increase inventory, Bob. And that isn't the goal."

"Okay, I know that," Bob is saying. "I'm not fighting you. The only reason I mention the lead times is I want to know what we do about all this."

Everybody turns to me.

I say, "This much is clear to me. We have to change the way we think about production capacity. We cannot measure the ca-