"Now hold on,’’ I say. "Let’s think about this for a second.’’
Bob shakes his head. "What is there to think about?’’
"Let’s just try to reason this through,’’ I say. "What was the problem?’’
"The parts didn’t arrive at the NCX-10, which meant the operators couldn’t
run the batch they were supposed to be running,’’ says Bob in kind of a sing-
song way.
"And the cause was that the bottleneck parts
were held up by this non-
bottleneck machine running non-bottleneck parts,’’ I say. "Now we’ve got to
ask ourselves why that happened.’’
"The guy in charge here was just trying to stay busy, that’s all,’’ says Bob.
"Right. Because if he didn’t stay busy, someone like you would come along
and jump all over him,’’ I say.
"Yeah, and if I didn’t, then someone like you would jump all over me,’’ says
Bob.
"Okay, granted. But
even though this guy was busy, he wasn’t
helping to
move toward the goal,’’ I say.
"Well...’’
"He wasn’t, Bob! Look,’’ I say. I point to the parts destined for the NCX-10.
"We need those parts now, not tomorrow. The non-bottleneck parts we may
not need for weeks, or even months —maybe never. So by continuing to run
the non-bottleneck parts, this guy was actually interfering with our ability to
get an order out the door and make money.’’
"But he didn’t know any better,’’ says Bob.
"Exactly. He couldn’t distinguish between an important batch of parts and an
unimportant one,’’ I say. "Why not?’’
"Nobody told him.’’
"Until you came along,’’ I say. "But you can’t be everywhere, and this same
kind of thing is going to happen again.
So how do we communicate to
everybody in the plant which parts are important?’’
"I guess we need some kind of system,’’ says Bob.
"Fine. Let’s go work on one right away so we don’t have to keep putting up
with this crap,’’ I say. "And before we do anything else, let’s make sure that
people at both of the bottlenecks know to keep working on the order with the
highest priority number on the list.’’
Bob has a final chat with Otto to make sure he knows what to do with the
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