The Goal: a process of Ongoing Improvement

part number.’’
"Okay, let’s get Stacey in on this.’’
Stacey Potazenik manages inventory control for the plant. Lou makes a
call and pulls her out of another meeting.
Stacey is a woman in her early 40’s. She’s tall, thin, and brisk in her manner.
Her hair is black with strands of gray and she wears big, round glasses. She is
always dressed in jackets and skirts; never have I seen her in a blouse with
any kind of lace, ribbon or frill. I know almost nothing about her personal
life. She wears a ring, but she’s never mentioned a husband. She rarely
mentions anything about her life outside the plant. I do know she works hard.
When she comes in to see us, I ask her about work-in-process on those parts
passing through the robot areas.
"Do you want exact numbers?’’ she asks.
"No, we just need to know the trends,’’ I say.
"Well, I can tell you without looking that inventories went up on those
parts,’’ Stacey says.

---

"Recently?’’
"No, it’s been happening since late last summer, around the end of the third
quarter,’’ she says. "And you can’t blame me for it—even though everyone
always does—because I fought it every step of the way.’’
"What do you mean?’’
"You remember, don’t you? Or maybe you weren’t here then. But when the
reports came in, we found the robots in welding were only running at
something like thirty percent efficiency. And the other robots weren’t much
better. Nobody would stand for that.’’
I look over at Lou.
"We had to do something,’’ he says. "Frost would have had my head if I
hadn’t spoken up. Those things were brand new and very expensive. They’d
never pay for themselves in the projected time if we kept them at thirty
percent.’’
"Okay, hold on a minute,’’ I tell him. I turn back to Stacey. "What did you do
then?’’
She says, "What 
could
I do? I had to release more materials to the floor in all
the areas feeding the robots. Giving the robots more to produce increased
their efficiencies. But ever since then, we’ve been ending each month with a
surplus of those parts.’’
"But the important thing was that efficiencies did go up,’’ says Lou, trying to
add a bright note. "Nobody can find fault with us on that.’’
"I’m not sure of that at all any more,’’ I say. "Stacey, why are we getting that
surplus? How come we aren’t consuming those parts?’’
"Well, in a lot of cases, we don’t have any orders to fill at present which
would call for those parts,’’ she says. "And in the cases where we do have
orders, we just can’t seem to get enough of the other parts we need.’’

---

"How come?’’
"You’d have to ask Bob Donovan about that,’’ Stacey says.
"Lou, let’s have Bob paged,’’ I say.
Bob comes into the office with a smear of grease on his white shirt over
the bulge of his beer gut, and he’s talking nonstop about what’s going on with
the breakdown of the automatic testing machines.
"Bob,’’ I tell him, "forget about that for now.’’
"Something else wrong?’’ he asks.
"Yes, there is. We’ve just been talking about our local celebrities, the
robots,’’ I say.
Bob glances from side to side, wondering, I suppose, what we’ve been
saying.
"What are you worried about them for?’’ he asks. "The robots work pretty
good now.’’
"We’re not so sure about that,’’ I say. "Stacey tells me we’ve got an excess of