Category Archives: Theory of Contraints

COMMUTING AND PROCESS ANALYSIS PART 4 – SUMMARY

car4Welcome back and I hope the previous 3 posts gave you some things to think about.  I have been talking about how to apply some of the principles of Process Analysis to the commuting process.  The reason for picking that process was because most of us have at least some experience with it but mostly to show that the various Process Analysis and Supply Chain tools can be applied to any process.  It just requires a flexible mind set and an understanding of how the tools can be applied.  I have deliberately stayed at a very high level partially because most people jump right in at a very highly detailed level, partially to keep the size of each of the posts shorter and partially because this is a very complex process when you get more detailed.  In the first post I talked about the key question to start any Process Analysis with –“What, ultimately, is this process meant to accomplish?” and suggested an answer – The purpose of the commuting process is to move people and products from one point to another point as effectively as possible using the minimum of resources possible. From there we moved on to a discussion of what that answer meant which led us into an exploration (in Part 2) of some of the resources required for the commuting process.  This was then followed up (in Part 3) with a discussion of some of the tools we could use to analysis the process and surface some possible solutions or improvements.  From all this we can definitely see that the more complicated the process the more important it is to start at a high level and then progressively “peel the onion” to more and more detailed analysis.  In this case you would also need to consider the synergies and conflicts between the various competing processes within the larger Commuting process.

One last point about process analysis, sometimes, rather than making the process faster it is better to make it smaller.  In this case trying to speed up the commute or add more resources is both painful and expensive.  If we could reduce the number of people requiring this process it might be easier to make it more effective.  The trick of course is how to do that?  It may not be possible at a macro level but perhaps some progress could be made at a grass roots level.  Think of this as an exercise in culture change and perhaps some push by the government (who are ultimately in charge of the financing of commuting resources) would be helpful and cheaper than new resources.  One potential way to reduce the number of people commuting would be a growth in telecommuting.  I realize that most production facilities actually require the people to be at the plant but most big plants have already moved out of the downtown areas so they are not part of the worst commuting areas anyway.  Instead, most of the downtown organizations are service based operations such as head offices.  As a cultural issue, while the technology exists for many more people to telecommute, most companies are not prepared to allow the majority of their workers to be out of sight (and direct control).  The good news is that telecommuting does not need to just mean working from home.  The technology exists so that telecommuting just means working from some place other that the main office.  One way to keep both sides happy might be for large inner city companies could set up small satellites in surrounding communities that people could work from or meet with clients at.  This way neither of them would need to commute into the city.  Maybe they come to main office once a week on a staggered basis but most meetings would be electronic.  The advantage to the company is that they could reduce the square footage of that very expensive downtown facility and replace it with much cheaper square footage at the satellite office while still maintaining a prestigious main address.  Of course they would need to ensure that all required documentation is available electronically so it could be accessed from any of the sites but that is relatively easy to do.  The advantage to the employee is a much shorter commute, more time doing what they want rather than sitting in a car or bus every day and a better work / life balance.  The advantage to the customer is easier and faster access to people they need to visit with all the time saving that comes with that  This leads to happier customers which is also a benefit to the company.

Thank you for reading these posts.  I hope you have enjoyed this series of posts and that it has given you some new points to think about.  If you have any thoughts or questions please feel free to comment on the posts and we can see what sort of conversation we can get started on it.

COMMUTING AND PROCESS ANALYSIS PART 3 – TOOLS

car3Welcome to Part 3 of my discussion of Process Analysis & Commuting.  In Part 1 we introduced the idea of starting your Process Analysis by first looking at the large picture.   We then moved on to a discussion of some of the resources that are involved in the commuting process.  In this post I want to take a look at some of the tools that can be used in the Process Analysis as we start diving a little deeper into the Analysis.  I am still trying to stay at a relatively high level so will not go into great detail but any of these tools can be used at a much deeper level than I will go into during this discussion.  Also, just as a reminder, the answer to my original question was – The purpose of the commuting process is to move people and products from one point to another point as effectively as possible using the minimum of resources possible. So, if we are trying to analyse this process we would obviously need to look at the pros and cons of each possible method or resource (as discussed in Part 2).  To a large extent this is a customer service type of analysis since the resource supplier (government in most cases) must decide what services they will make available to the customer (commuter) and at what service level.  As with any customer service situation, in the end the customer gets to decide what service they wish to “buy”.  So what are some of the tools to analyse this process?  While not an exhaustive list, here are a couple:

Lean – Actually this is a tool set rather than a specific tool and there are many possibilities inside the set but I wanted to bring your attention to the 8 wastes concept.  If we look at each of the resources discussed earlier, which ones generate the most waste and how do these wastes interact?   Two of the wastes listed are waiting and unnecessary movement.  With this in mind an analysis of the length of time for each method and what makes up the time involved would be a good start.  For example, when driving during “rush hour”, the time involved could be 60 minutes but the same drive an hour later may only be 35 minutes and on a Sunday afternoon may only be 15 minutes.  Perhaps a staggered start time would spread the resource requirements and speed everything up.  Of course that does leave the question of how to co-ordinate that type of program.  Some additional questions that this brings up would be: What is the capacity usage of the resource (road), What is the cost of expanded resources, What other ways are there to decrease the resource requirement…?  Similarly, we know that in most cases it takes longer to use mass transit then to use your car, but what makes it longer?  Most of the time is expended in getting to the mass transit entry process and then waiting for the resource (bus, train, etc).  Does the efficiency of moving large numbers of people at a time outweigh the time spent waiting to use the resource?  What could be done to shorten this queue time?

Theory of Constraints – The basis of theory of constraints is that one part of any operation will be the bottleneck that sets the speed for the entire process.  Only changes to the bottleneck can speed up the process since changes anywhere else will still not allow the process to run any faster than the bottleneck.  The trick here is to identify the bottle neck and to make effective changes (which is NOT as easy as it sounds).  Let’s take a somewhat simplified example of using the bus – The steps in this process may be: Leave house, walk to bus stop, wait for bus, board bus, ride bus to desired stop, get off bus, walk to work.  This is simplified as I am not considering many of the complications such as transfers, etc.  So which step is the bottleneck?  The longest time is the ride on the bus but that is not necessarily a process bottleneck as there are a string of buses with a new one coming on a schedule (let’s say every 15 min).  The bus carries many people at one time so the number of finished units (people) arriving at the end of the operation is actually relatively high.  You could make it higher yet by adding more buses to the line (reducing time between buses) or using bigger buses to carry more people per bus.  The problem with this is, if there are not enough people at the various stops, what you will have is partially filled buses which would be a waste of the resource.  In actual fact the bottleneck in this example is the number of people arriving at the bus stop to catch the next bus and this is a factor of the total number of people using the bus and the time of day.  How do you increase the number of people using the bus and flatten the cyclical pattern at the same time?  Perhaps, rather than adding more buses to a specific line it would be better to add more routes and split smaller buses across them.  Shortening the walk (especially in inclement weather) and the wait time might encourage more ridership which would increase revenue to offset the cost of the increased drivers that would be required.

Continuous Improvement – This one is pretty self-explanatory but is probably best applied to the customer experience.  It is a proven fact that people will pay more if they perceive value to a particular product or process.  One way this can be used in practise is to remember that people will almost always pick a better experience over a poorer experience.  This can be used two ways. Degrade the process you are trying to move people away from and/or improve the process you want people to move to.  I strongly suggest using positive reinforcement as negative reinforcement (degrading service) has all kinds of nasty side effects, such as very grumpy voters in an election.

House of Quality – I am actually not going to go into House of Quality in this post though the idea of using this tool to better understand what the customer wants and how to provide it is very intriguing.  If anyone else wants to follow up with a Quality series on this topic I would love to see it.

I am going to cut off the tools at this point.  As with many of the other thoughts raised in this series we could write books about each of them.  Instead, please join me in Part 4 where we can summarize this entire discussion and maybe suggest a couple of possible (partial) solutions.