The Goal

76

"Yes, there is. We've just been talking about our local celebri- ties, the robots," I say.

Bob glances from side to side, wondering, I suppose, what we've been saying.

"What are you worried about them for?" he asks. "The ro- bots work pretty good now."

"We're not so sure about that," I say. "Stacey tells me we've got an excess of parts built by the robots. But in some instances we can't get enough of certain other parts to assemble and ship our orders."

Bob says, "It isn't that we can't get enough parts-it's more that we can't seem to get them when we need them. That's true even with a lot of the robot parts. We'll have a pile of something like, say, a CD-50 sit around for months waiting for control boxes. Then we'll get the control boxes, but we won't have something else. Finally we get the something else, and we build the order and ship it. Next thing you know, you're looking around for a CD-50 and you can't find any. We'll have tons of CD-45's and 80's, but no 50's. So we wait. And by the time we get the 50's again, all the control boxes are gone."

"And so on, and so on, and so on," says Stacey.

"But, Stacey, you said the robots were producing a lot of parts for which we don't have product orders," I say. "That means we're producing parts we don't need."

"Everybody tells me we'll use them eventually," she says. Then she adds, "Look, it's the same game everybody plays. Whenever efficiencies take a drop, everybody draws against the future forecast to keep busy. We build inventory. If the forecast doesn't hold up, there's hell to pay. Well, that's what's happening now. We've been building inventory for the better part of a year, and the market hasn't helped us one damn bit."

"I know, Stacey, I know," I tell her. "And I'm not blaming you or anybody. I'm just trying to figure this out."

Restless, I get up and pace.

I say, "So the bottom line is this: to give the robots more to do, we released more materials."

"Which, in turn, increased inventories," says Stacey.

"Which has increased our costs," I add.

"But the cost of those parts went down," says Lou.

"Did it?" I ask. "What about the added carrying cost of in-