Peter Drucker’s clever arrangement of words just rolls off the tongue, and most of us would say Amen every time we hear it, but can you name the things you are doing with great efficiently that you should not be doing at all? Can you name ONE thing you are doing with great efficiently that you should not be doing at all?
For me, the most obvious one that I did early in my cabinetry manufacturing career was attempt to schedule every minute of every day for every team member (that’s a lot of every’s). At first, I did it manually (on paper), then I utilized a spreadsheet (slightly more efficient), then I invested in a series of sophisticated software programs (all of them claimed to do the process more efficiently than all the others), with all failing to live up to the advertised claims of “more efficient”.
Ultimately I discovered TOC and learned that for me, simply having a TAKT time (German word for rhythm or beat), and doing all that I could to get to one-piece-flow eliminated the NEED to schedule every minute of every day for every team member into infinity and beyond.
As long as we have dependent events (A has to happen before we can do B), and Murphy’s Law is in effect, scheduling every minute of every day for every team member is an exercise in futility (one thing goes wrong, and all that planning might just unravel). Even with efficient “Dependent Event” software features at your disposal, you cannot account for all the variations of something arriving late, someone not showing up, something being done incorrectly, a job being delayed, etc., etc., etc.
With one-piece-flow, and knowing your hourly, daily, and weekly TAKT time, you can provide your team with a goal/scoreboard, and they know at the end of the day whether they were successful, or NOT. This is not only 10X easier to manage, the visibility is AMAZING, the lack of WIP (Work In Process) saves a ton of material and labor dollars, the floor space freed up is phenomenal, and the feedback loop is extraordinary.
So what are the things you are doing with great efficiency that you should not be doing at all?
