Just as an athlete overcomes powerful opponents, organizations can defeat the hidden forces of waste, stress, and uncertainty by understanding operations science and using its laws to improve flow, resilience, and financial performance.
Leadership efforts are greatly weakened without an organization’s or team’s embrace of operations science. Should you try to build a bridge without understanding engineering science? That is doubtful at best. Similar chances of success occur in operations and businesses without understanding operations science.
Everyone want their operations or project to be resilient. Very few know how to design resilience into their operations. This week we explore resilience in operations and the traits of resilient operations.
Every system — factory, lab, hospital, airline, project — follows natural laws. The leaders who understand those laws lead with clarity instead of chaos. “Working better” is not about working harder — it’s about working scientifically. This week describes operations science fundamentals required for working better and their effect on teams’ efforts for improved performance.
Listen to powerful insights from Sanjay Huprikar, Chief Global Officer, of the Global Electronics Association. Learn how leadership builds resilience in a turbulent, $6 trillion electronics industry. Discover how to drive smarter, faster, and more resilient operations.
Operations science played a key role in helping Delta TechOps rebuild from the severe disruption of Covid and, at the same time, embark on an ambitious growth plan for its maintenance, repair, and overhaul business. We summarize the compelling podcast of Mike McBride, VP of Engines and Components, and his take on the events. It provides powerful lessons on crisis management in operations.
There are a couple of common, avoidable mistakes that organizations make when creating their annual operating plans. This 2-minute video describes those mistakes.
Batch size optimization decisions must consider capacity utilization, not only setup cost and inventory cost.
No manager or executive should be put in charge of operations without understanding these fundamental relationships.
Operations is not a black box. You should start any gemba journey with an operations science map to guide you quickly and efficiently.
Once a supplier’s supplier’s strengths and weaknesses are understood from operations science-based analysis, supply chain managers can bring price into the conversation and much more easily establish a productive and mutually profitable relationship as we demonstrate.
Just as you would survey the ground to evaluate it as a foundation for a bridge, you should evaluate your suppliers as part of building a relationship. Operations science provides the ability to evaluate suppliers without discussing sensitive cost information.
Learn the secrets of supplier management success using operations science.
Odds of success for managers stepping into new leadership roles are greatly improved by using operations science concepts to build rapport. See how in this week’s 2-minute video.
To create true, sustained innovation, start from first principles in the operations science framework. Tools and best practices come afterwards, they do not make a good foundation for innovation.
Too often people confuse reporting with control. Here we list actual controls that will provide predictable results.
Good strategy and tactics can be wasted if proper control is not used effectively. Find out how to establish reliable control.
Strategy without action is daydreaming. We describe the business system framework and tactics needed to achieve successful results repeatedly and sustainably.
The laws and concepts of operations science are like an objective third party referee passing judgment on what strategies are or are not feasible. Operations science doesn’t care if you believe in it or not. It dictates outcomes either way.
Once you have seen your operations through Operations Science Applied, you will never look at operations the same way as you did before. You will be on your way to predictable, sustainable success.
Safety stock is often seen as a holy grail for ensuring good customer service and optimal inventory levels. It is often miscalculated and mismanaged.
In trying to keep things simple when making delivery promises to customers, companies unintentionally make planning and execution less effective and less efficient.
Inventory policy should use the parameters of your environment along with operations science and math to help you adjust to variability yet arrive at planned performance as expected.
We have seen inventory managers and planners make the mistake of monitoring on-hand to determine how much inventory they should order. This is an incomplete approach and we describe the appropriate measure for good control.
We explore a widespread error in inventory management which is very basic, very harmful to customer service and cost, and easy to fix.
Following up with last week’s introduction to the application of operations science in Engineering and Construction projects, a case study is provided this week with specifics of application.
This week we explore one of the largest cost savings opportunities on the plant. Application of operations science to Engineering and Construction mega projects.
St. Mary’s hospital case study showing the benefits of using operations science to better synchronize nursing resources with patient demand.
Operations science provided a framework to help Baxter Healthcare optimize operations and realize major performance improvements.
AI presents great promise and great risk. Watch this week’s video to discover how to manage the risk of AI in operations, projects, services and supply chain.
The unique insights provided by an operations science flow analysis led this company to achieve a massive increase in throughput and efficiency in a couple of months.
Last week we were below goal. that was terrible. This week we are above goal. Terrific, pizza for everyone! Are you just reacting to noise in the system? If so, you’re just increasing variability and its associated buffering requirements and, at the same, time creating unnecessary stress for your people.
This week we provide specific examples of leading and lagging measures. Leading measures track causes, not effects. To see the effects, track lagging measures which provide understanding of whether the causes were accurately described–true scientific thinking.
Measures motivate behavior. This week provides a list of important characteristics of measures used for measuring individual performance. Also provided are specific examples of these measures, including examples the average view may not have seen before.
Don’t be overwhelmed with measures and KPIs. In the operations science framework, required measures naturally surface. There are the vital few and everything else is just window dressing.
Don’t let your continuous improvement efforts end up just going through the motions. See how operations science helps you supercharge any process improvement efforts.
Organizations see repeated occurrences of poor performance even after investing tremendous amounts of money and time in implementing new software. This does not have to be.
Computers are much faster than people at processing information. This causes an excessive feedback problem that many don’t recognize. Companies invest millions and billions of dollars in IT but still end up with poor on-time delivery and high cost.
The operations science model for operations management provides quick improvements and long-lasting success.
Efficient frontiers provide a great benchmark of where your inventory performance is versus where it could be.
See a powerful, practical WIP analysis and control tool, flow performance curves (FPC). FPCs apply to the virtual work (tasks) of projects and services as well as to the physical WIP of traditional manufacturing and provide quick insight that leads to rapid improvements.
In this second part video on the inventory buffer, we cover the fundamental drivers of stock inventory and provide three powerful hints for optimal inventory management.
A description of the two fundamental types of inventory, the science that makes them different, and basic concepts for optimal control.
Proper capacity planning requires that you, one, know how to calculate capacity and, two, understand the effects of variability and how to calculate those effects. Plan your capacity buffer with operations science to obtain best financial and customer service performance.
Operations science concepts connect financial statements to operations performance optimization. Jeff Bell, Managing Director of Arc Precision, shares his experience applying the concepts to successfully grow and manage a company.
An explanation of the fundamental dynamics of buffers and variability that is central to operations science. Understanding this relationship is vital for people in operations to achieve predictable success in their careers.
This week’s episode explores what motivates people, how operations science helps leaders motivate their teams, and how operations science strengthens motivation within a team.
In this week’s episode, we provide the basic definition of operations science and describe its core concept. This is a fundamental requirement for understanding behavior of operations so leaders and workers can establish predictive control and accelerate success.
A working definition of strategy and operations strategy. Building on last week’s video, we discuss characteristics required to establish objective, productive operations goals that align with operations science.
Evaluation of popular operations goals and a description of objective operations goals that align with operations science.
Common forecasting errors and practical tips for productive forecasting.
A fundamental challenge for all organizations is how to manage variability. We discuss the performance envelope, a fundamental element required to plan for and manage variability successfully.