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The most demanding assumption that TPS makes about the production environment is that it is a stable environment. And it demands stability in three different aspects.
Eliyahu M. Goldratt -
What my people and I have done is to examine daily the queues in front of the assembly and in front of the bottlenecks— we call them ‘buffers.’ We check just to be sure that everything that’s scheduled to be worked on is there—that there are no ‘holes.’ We thought that if a new bottleneck pops up it would immediately show up as a hole in at least one of these buffers.
Eliyahu M. Goldratt
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Ford’s starting point was that the key for effective production is to concentrate on improving the overall flow of products through the operations. His efforts to improve flow were so successful that, by 1926, the lead time from mining the iron ore to having a completed car composed of more than 5,000 parts, on the train ready for delivery, was 81 hours!3 Eighty years later, no car manufacturer in the world has been able to achieve, or even come close, to such a short lead time.
Eliyahu M. Goldratt -
While they go get the others, I figure out the details. The system I’ve set up is intended to "process’’ matches. It does this by moving a quantity of match sticks out of their box, and through each of the bowls in succession. The dice determine how many matches can be moved from one bowl to the next. The dice represent the capacity of each resource, each bowl; the set of bowls are my dependent events, my stages of production. Each has exactly the same capacity as the others, but its actual yield will fluctuate somewhat.
Eliyahu M. Goldratt -
If synchronized efforts are required and the contribution of one link is strongly dependent on the performance of the other links, we cannot ignore the fact that organizations are not just a pile of different links, they should be regarded as chains.
Eliyahu M. Goldratt -
So I’ve got limits on how fast I can go—both my own (I can only go so fast for so long before I fall over and pant to death) and those of the others on the hike. However, there is no limit on my ability to slow down. Or on anyone else’s ability to slow down. Or stop. And if any of us did, the line would extend indefinitely. What’s happening isn’t an averaging out of the fluctuations in our various speeds, but an accumulation of the fluctuations. And mostly it’s an accumulation of slowness—because dependency limits the opportunities for higher fluctuations. And that’s why the line is spreading. We can make the line shrink only by having everyone in the back of the line move much faster than Ron’s average over some distance.
Eliyahu M. Goldratt -
We’re dealing with the fact that we haven’t got any idea of what we’re doing. If we’re just looking for some arbitrary order, and we can choose among so many possibilities, then what’s the point in putting so much effort in collecting so much data? What do we gain from it, except the ability to impress people with some thick reports or to throw the company into another reorganization in order to hide from the fact that we don’t really understand what we’re doing? This avenue of first collecting data, getting familiar with the facts, seems to lead us nowhere. It’s nothing more than an exercise in futility. Come on, we need another way to attack the issue.
Eliyahu M. Goldratt -
I’ve got the machines. I’ve got the people. I’ve got all the materials I need. I know there’s a market out there, because the competitors’ stuff is selling. So what the hell is it?
Eliyahu M. Goldratt
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You forced us to view production as a means to satisfy sales. I want to change the role production is playing in getting sales.
Eliyahu M. Goldratt -
The key is in the hands of production. These techniques to manage the buffers should not be used just to track missing parts while there is still time, they should be used mainly to focus our local improvement efforts. We must guarantee that the improvements on the CCRs will always be sufficient to prevent them from becoming bottlenecks.
Eliyahu M. Goldratt -
If you don't manufacture a quality product all you've got at the end is a bunch of expensive mistakes.
Eliyahu M. Goldratt -
So the way to express the goal is this? Increase throughput while simultaneously reducing both inventory and operating expense.
Eliyahu M. Goldratt -
We need financial measurements for sure—but we don’t need them for their own sake. We need them for two different reasons. One is control; knowing to what extent a company is achieving its goal of making money. The other reason is probably even more important; measurements should induce the parts to do what’s good for the organization as a whole.
Eliyahu M. Goldratt -
I write down the three measurements which Lou and I agreed are central to knowing if the company is making money: net profit, ROI and cash flow.
Eliyahu M. Goldratt
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The important thing is you’ve just proven that any organization should be viewed as a chain. I can take it from here. Since the strength of the chain is determined by the weakest link, then the first step to improve an organization must be to identify the weakest link. “Or links,” I correct. “Remember, an organization may be comprised of several independent chains.”
Eliyahu M. Goldratt -
All those calls and meetings were fire fighting. I remind myself. No fires, no fighting. Now, everything is running smoothly— almost too smoothly.
Eliyahu M. Goldratt -
I reach for my briefcase, take out a yellow legal pad and take a pen from my coat pocket. Then I make a list of all the items people think of as being goals: cost-effective purchasing, employing good people, high technology, producing products, producing quality products, selling quality products, capturing market share. I even add some others like communications and customer satisfaction. All of those are essential to running the business successfully. What do they all do? They enable the company to make money. But they are not the goals themselves; they’re just the means of achieving the goal.
Eliyahu M. Goldratt -
What was the nature of the answers, the solutions, that Jonah caused us to develop? They all had one thing in common. They all made common sense, and at the same time, they flew directly in the face of everything I’d ever learned. Would we have had the courage to try to implement them if it weren’t for the fact that we’d had to sweat to construct them? Most probably not. If it weren’t for the conviction that we gained in the struggle—for the ownership that we developed in the process—I don’t think we’d actually have had the guts to put our solutions into practice.
Eliyahu M. Goldratt -
Somewhere in the scientific method lies the answer for the needed management techniques. It is obvious.
Eliyahu M. Goldratt -
Science is simply the method we use to try and postulate a minimum set of assumptions that can explain, through a straightforward logical derivation, the existence of many phenomena of nature.
Eliyahu M. Goldratt
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Whenever we think we have final answers progress, science, and better understanding ceases.
Eliyahu M. Goldratt -
Okay, so why was the plant built in the first place? It was built to produce products. Why can’t that be the goal? Jonah said it wasn’t. But I don’t see why it isn’t the goal. We’re a manufacturing company. That means we have to manufacture something, doesn’t it? Isn’t that the whole point, to produce products? Why else are we here?
Eliyahu M. Goldratt -
In order to significantly increase sales we have to increase the perception of value of the market for our products.
Eliyahu M. Goldratt -
More importantly, our software worked. I don't just mean that it didn't bump, or that it performed according to the written specifications, or that it was efficient in producing reports. It really worked.
Eliyahu M. Goldratt