Death by Efficiency

Overproduction, like overeating, kills you one piece at a time

I was reminded this week how problematic the conceptual blind spots in our management systems can be. An otherwise insightful and passionate-to-improve organization that I was visiting was caught in a vicious production cycle that I’ll refer to ineloquently as “piling on.”

That is, each department, struggling to be efficient, was overproducing to the max, leaving a pile of partially finished product in front of its downstream internal customer. In cases where the pile wouldn’t fit in the internal customer’s allotted space, it was moved to a warehouse until there was space for it on the factory floor.

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Logics - Logistics

Yes, since years I fight my battle against the equation Logistics = Transportation & Warehousing. Logistics is much, much more: it's a key process in any management system, but nobody seems to care. Just name me somebody, anybody, who knows - and understands ! - the meaning of the term "logistics". Nations have fought, won or lost wars, millions people lost their life because of uneffective Logistics. Did we learn? Something, at least. Ail evidence responds "no" to this question. Overproduction has some clear input to it: return on investment, first, control of the market / business, second. But there's a third, side input to it, that goes most ignored: "God cannot be cheated". Thank you.