Its my company doing well?
Please try to observe the activity in your organization (or office, shop floor, etc) and you will be able to identify the symptoms of instability (if exist), indicated by the following conditions:
- A high degree of variation in performance measures—either pieces produced or pieces per labor hour.
- Changing the “plan” often when a problem occurs. This includes relocating labor or leaving a position vacant when an absence occurs, moving product to another machine when a breakdown occurs (and thus not producing the planned product), and stopping work in the middle of an order to change to another order.
- It is not possible to observe a consistent pattern or method to the work.
- Batches or piles of work in process (WIP) that are random—sometimes more, sometimes less.
- Sequential operations that operate independently (island processes).
- Inconsistent or nonexistent flow (also indicated by random WIP piles).
- Frequent use of the words usually, basically, normally, typically, generally, most of the time, when describing the operation, followed by except when, as in:
- Statements such as, “We trust the operators to make decisions about how the work is done” (part of a misguided application of employee empowerment).
"Normally we do this . . . except when . . . happens, then we do this. . . .” (By its very nature, an unstable operation does not often experience “nor-mal” in terms of consistent method. In fact, the abnormal becomes the normal.)
