Don’t Know
Dr. Eliyahu Goldratt, author of The Goal, would tell his students and colleagues to never say “I know”. I completely agree with this sentiment. Let’s explore this a bit. Let’s start with the arrogance. When someone is trying to tell me something, and I say, “I know”, I’m essentially telling them that I am so […]
Don’t Retrain
An important part of maintaining a Quality Management System (QMS) is taking action when a nonconformance to a requirement is discovered during inspection, review or some type of audit. The expectation is that an investigation is performed and the Root Cause of the nonconformance is identified. The action taken, called a Corrective Action, is supposed […]
Don’t Set Priorities
Have you ever been told that you need rethink your priorities? That can be good advice, but I will add this twist: you can only have one. The plural form of priority was invented in the 1900s and the term “priorities” didn’t really show up in print until around the 1940s. Priority comes from the […]
Don’t Manage
I’ve never liked the title of Manager. Because Managers, well, manage. I don’t like to manage, and I don’t like to be managed. To me, manage means “to scrape by” or “make do”. This sounds very similar to “do more with less” that I spoke negatively about in my last post. This is no way […]
Don’t Do More with Less
Have you ever been told that you need to “do more with less”? I have. And I think this has become more prevalent during the COVID pandemic where many organizations continue to be short staffed. But honestly, this was always a thing. Companies have always had cost-cutting programs where they think they can reduce headcount […]
Don’t Make Them Feel Needed
I just finished a book titled The Capitalist Philosophers by Andrea Gabor. One chapter focused on Elton Mayo who the author (partially) attributed the invention of corporate “human relations”. This was a great contrast to the very popular “scientific management” approach introduce by Frederick Taylor who took a very adversarial approach to the labor force. […]
Don’t Be Reasonable
Mark Twain is credited with saying “The man with a new idea is a Crank, until the idea succeeds”. Most of us are the type that stand and point fingers at the “Cranks” and, being the reasonable people we are, tell them why the idea won’t succeed. Maybe we’ll even provide historical data to support […]
Don’t Keep Them Busy – Part 3 of 3
In part 1 of this series, I introduced some negative effects of “keeping them busy”. In part 2, I explained a little bit about the mechanics of how this happens, and the different problems caused by overactivation of bottleneck and non-bottleneck resources. This time, I will conclude with the additional ill effects of unneeded overtime, […]
Don’t Keep Them Busy – Part 2 of 3
In my previous post I explained how keeping people busy can lead to issues such as increased WIP, decreased cash flow, increased lead time and parts shortages. This time, let’s talk a little bit more about the mechanics of how these issues are created by “keeping them busy”. It is common knowledge among operations managers […]
Don’t Keep Them Busy – Part 1 of 3
Virtually every manufacturing company I’ve visited since I started auditing and consulting focuses on keeping the people moving instead of keeping the product moving. They can’t stand to pay an employee for standing idle, so they have them continue to make product that isn’t really needed at the moment. They somehow feel that they are […]