VELOCITY - DEE JACOB [109]
“Right, globalization of suppliers was under way,” said Amy, “and the conclusion was made – though not by me – that we could not compete against Asian vendors with lower labor costs. Instead, we would carve our own market niche in specialty composites that offered high performance, and for us, offered higher margins.”
“But to succeed in the specialty segment,” Murphy went on, “we needed flexibility. That flexibility took us into unfamiliar territory, and that in part was what brought on the lawsuit.”
“As I understand it,” said Garth, “the lawsuit actually had little to do with us. We were caught in a broad net. It was our customer who was primarily at fault for giving us poor specifications.”
“Nevertheless,” said Murphy, “in order to protect the company, and our customers, and the ultimate consumers, whoever they might be, the design approval requirement was put in place.”
“Excuse me,” said Amy, “but could we please fast forward?”
“Yes, I know all that seems like ancient history,” said Murphy, “but you should understand that one condition begat the next. Every effect has its preceding cause. And because design approval from F&D became mandatory, the effect was that Oakton’s ability to produce became dependent upon Rockville’s ability to approve.”
“Dependent? I don’t quite understand,” said Elaine.
“Yes, dependent. As in, one action cannot proceed until a prior action has been completed,” said Murphy. “As in, before you can cook dinner, you must first go to the store and buy the food to be cooked.”
“But so what?” asked Elaine.
“When we became dependent upon the analysts, their performance affected ours. If Rockville was late, then Oakton was late.”
“Unless you could catch up and get back on schedule,” Amy concluded.
“Exactly right,” said Murphy. “And the game of catch-up became a game that we at Oakton became very good at playing.”
“But if Oakton is as good as you say at playing catch-up,” asked Garth, “why isn’t it doing more now?”
All eyes turned to Wayne Reese.
“To be honest,” said Wayne, “I don’t understand it myself. Because LSS has made Oakton more efficient.”
“No, sir, I beg to differ,” said Murphy. “LSS has not made Oakton as a whole more efficient. You have made pieces of the production process more efficient, but you have not made the production system as a whole more efficient.”
“Wait a minute!” argued Kurt. “Look at all the waste we’ve removed! We’ve reorganized the Cooler to get the cold storage materials in and out faster. We’ve established kanbans. We’ve lowered the defect rate on the M57 Line by two percent. We’ve color-coded the resin dye bins so that mistakes are almost impossible. We’ve shifted personnel between stations to balance staff to workload – and on and on. You can’t say that all of that hasn’t improved the system!”
“What have you done to improve the performance of Godzilla?” asked Murphy.
“We’ve reduced the number of people used to load and unload.”
“I’m sorry to tell you, but what you have actually done is removed the reserve capacity that was in place for a reason: to allow us to recover quickly when something goes wrong – and sooner or later it always does, or my name isn’t Murphy.”
Kurt began to defend again, but Wayne put a hand on his shoulder and stopped him.
“No, Maguire has a point,” said Wayne. “It’s been staring me in the face for months, and I hate to admit it, but until we reinvent the autoclave process technology –”
“We are not spending twenty million just to achieve one-piece flow,” said Amy. “Not this year certainly, and not any time in the foreseeable future.”
“Then,” said Murphy, “if you cannot increase the rate of flow through Godzilla …”
“Then we cannot increase the throughput of the system as a whole,” said Amy, drawing the conclusion.
“I know,” Wayne Reese was nodding in admission. “We can improve upstream and downstream, but the flow will not improve because of the autoclave bottleneck.”
Amy picked up a pad of notes and a pen.
“This is the cause-effect chain that I think has gone on, that continues to go on,” said Amy.
She began writing brief