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How do we create focused work on the shop floor?
We come across so many suggestions for creating focused work for our employees. The book ‘Deep Work’ by Cal Newport advocates allocating time slots for uninterrupted work on important tasks to get in the flow and avoid multitasking. Some suggest turning off notifications on computer during such tasks to avoid diversion.
The purpose of these suggestions is to create focus. While we have such techniques for human work, how do we create focused work for machines on the shop floor?
TOC offers an excellent mechanism for this purpose. If a machine is the capacity constrained resource, we must focus on maximizing its output and utilize it to produce items with the highest throughput per hour.
What should all other machines focus on? One thing they should not focus on is maximizing their output. Instead, they should focus single-mindedly on improving flow by helping the capacity constrained resource to maximize its output.
TOC terms it as ‘Subordination’. It is often the least followed recommendation and the cause of sub-optimal production output.