VELOCITY - DEE JACOB [73]
“Hey, don’t you know it’s Saturday night?” he asked. “You can quit now.”
“Just give me five or ten minutes. I got some beer for you. It’s in the refrigerator, if you want one.”
He extended a muscular arm in front of her. She twisted it. He opened the refrigerator and got a beer.
Twenty minutes later, Amy was still at it. Tom came back, sat down at the kitchen table, and began to stare at her.
When she acknowledged him, he said, “Hi, Amy.”
“Hi. Just another couple of minutes. I’m sorry.”
“Why don’t you unlock that cage you’re in and come out and play?” he asked.
“There are things going on at work that are bothering me.”
“Like what?”
“Like the fact that we are a good way into the year, and I am not seeing the pickup in financial performance that I was expecting, despite all the improvements that Wayne Reese, my ops manager, has been installing.”
“I remember him,” said Tom. “He’s the Lean Six Sigma true believer.”
“Right, he and his Black Belts and Green Belts have been reconfiguring equipment, shifting workers here and there, and balancing the production line.”
“Balancing the line,” Tom repeated with the trace of a smile. “I know that phrase.”
“And meanwhile, the manufacturing guy who ran the Oakton plant for so many years is quitting on me.”
“How come?”
“That’s one of the many things I’m trying to understand. He was in my office this past week talking about how he just can’t go on with Wayne telling him how to run things – and it’s more than just egos or turf wars. It’s something philosophical. Murphy – that’s his name, Murphy Maguire; I don’t think you ever met him – was trying to tell me about some theory of something or other.”
“Theory of Constraints,” said Tom.
“Yes, that was it.”
“In the Marines, when they assigned me to manage part of the aircraft maintenance system, we used all three of them: Lean, Six Sigma, and the Theory of Constraints, or TOC.”
“Murphy made it sound like they were irreconcilable.”
“That’s not true. Lean and Theory of Constraints share a lot of the same values.”
“Well,” said Amy, “Wayne also seems to believe that they’re incompatible. He won’t hardly give Murph the time of day.”
“Lean and TOC also have some big differences, too. And if Wayne is running a balanced line, it’s no wonder that your manufacturing guy is fit to be tied.”
“Why is that?”
“Because a balanced line doesn’t really work.”
“Seriously? What do you mean it doesn’t work?” she asked.
“W-e-l-l,” he said, drawing out the word. “You know, it can work. If you have decades to remove all the variation in the system.”
“Decades? You mean, it works after decades?”
“In a large system, it takes a long time to engineer all variation out of the system – and by then, whatever you’re making, as well as the technology you’re using to make it, is probably outmoded. The quest for perfection exceeds the practical life of the product.”
“Wayne Reese is an LSS Master Black Belt,” said Amy. “Why would he advocate something that doesn’t work?”
Tom shrugged his shoulders and suggested, “Maybe because he believes in what he was taught.”
Amy put her hand on his forearm and said, “Tom, honey, are you sure about this?”
“Do your kids have a Yahtzee game? Parcheesi? Some kind of board games?” he asked.
“Yes, but why?”
“Because if you have some dice and a few other things, I can show you what happens with a balanced line and why it doesn’t work,” he said. “It’s a little game – actually more like a simulation than a game – that they taught us in the Marines. I mean, we actually did this.”
“All right,” she said. “Show me.”
“It would help if we had more people than the two of us. If you can get your parents and your kids to pitch in, it’ll go faster. It’s sort of fun. They might enjoy it.”
“Just in case, I’ll offer them a bribe,” Amy said to Tom, then called toward the living room:
“Hey, kids! Mom and Dad! How about pizza for dinner tonight?”
The idea met with enthusiasm.
“Okay, great,” said Amy. “I’ll call in the pizza order, but while we’re waiting for delivery, I want us all to