The Goal

158

"Probably because the set-up people went on break about ten minutes ago," says Bob. "They should be back in about twenty minutes."

"There is a clause in our union contract which stipulates there must be a half-hour break after every four hours of work," I explain to Jonah.

He asks, "But why should they take their break now instead of when the machine is running?"

Bob says, "Because it was eight o'clock and-"

Jonah holds up his hands and says, "Wait a minute. On any non-bottleneck machine in your plant, no problem. Because, after all, some percentage of a non-bottleneck's time should be idle. So who cares when those people take their breaks? It's no big deal. But on a bottleneck? It's exactly the opposite."

He points to the NCX-10 and says, "You have on this ma- chine only so many hours available for production-what is it... 600, 700 hours?"

"It's around 585 hours a month," says Ralph.

"Whatever is available, the demand is even greater," says Jonah. "If you lose one of those hours, or even half of it, you have lost it forever. You cannot recover it someplace else in the system. Your throughput for the entire plant will be lower by whatever amount the bottleneck produces in that time. And that makes an enormously expensive lunch break."

"But we have a union to deal with," says Bob.

Jonah says, "So talk to them. They have a stake in this plant. They're not stupid. But you have to make them understand."

Yeah, I'm thinking; that's easier said than done. On the other hand...

Jonah is walking around the NCX-10 now, but he's not just looking at it alone. He's looking at other equipment in the plant. He comes back to us.

"You've told me this is the only machine of its type in the plant," says Jonah, "But this is a relatively new machine. Where are the older machines that this one replaced? Do you still have those?"

Bob says vaguely, "Well, some of them we do. Some of them we got rid of. They were practically antiques."

"Do you have at least one of each type of the older machines necessary to do what this X-what-ever-it-is machine does?" Jonah asks.