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Who is stealing your critical production capacity?
If the system constraint happens to be a specific equipment on the production line, we must use that equipment to maximize the system throughput. While everyone agrees with this thought, my experience indicates that company policies and practices often come in the way of implementing it.
I have seen quite a few cases when the entire production line is shut down during lunch and tea breaks, since running it continuously would need extra manpower, which can’t be deployed as per the current policy. Who stole those precious hours which should have been used to produce the items in demand?
If we need to produce 100 units of a product to meet the current demand and inventory buffer depletion, we end up producing much higher quantities, say 500 units, which happens to be the Economic Batch Quantity. Who stole the capacity which was used up to produce those extra 400 units?
If the next shift operator comes late by 15 minutes, the constraint equipment sits idle, as the company policies discourage overtime. Who stole those precious 15 minutes?
Such conflicting policies and practices need to be tweaked and subordinated to the requirements of the constraint machine. You will be surprised how much of the stolen capacity can be recovered!