VELOCITY - DEE JACOB [74]
“What kind of game?” asked Michelle.
“I learned it in the Marines,” said Tom. “It’s a dice game.”
“Marines. Dice. I might have known,” said Amy.
“Well, it’s not craps, if that’s what you’re thinking,” said Tom. “Anyway, I need a few things.”
Amy scrounged up everything that Tom asked for – a dozen dice from various board games, a big jar of pennies, and a tablet of paper and a pen for keeping score.
The six of them sat around the dining room table. Tom was at one head of the table. To his right were Ben and Michelle. Amy sat at the far end of the table. Then to her right sat Harry and Zelda. Tom explained the rules.
“The idea of the game is to move pennies from one person to the next, starting from my end all around the table. We’re going to play the game two ways. The first way, each of us will have one die to roll, and we all roll together. Whatever number turns up – from one to six – determines how many pennies you can move from your position to the person on your right. Any questions?”
“Yes,” said Harry, raising his hand. “Where are we? Have I been here before?”
Zelda and Amy made the explanations, then Tom resumed.
“All of you start with four pennies. I am the bank, with the jar of pennies. Whatever I roll, I move that many pennies to Ben. And whatever Ben rolls allows him to move that number of pennies to Michelle – and so on around the table to Grandma Zelda.”
“So in manufacturing terms,” said Amy, “you would be raw materials inventory, the one who gates materials into the system.”
“Right,” said Tom. “Now if you want to think of this as a game, we’re all on the same team. Either all of us win or none of us win. There are no points for individual achievement. In order to win, we as a team have to get the expected number of pennies around the table and past Grandma Zelda, at which point they are through the system.”
“Finished goods,” said Amy.
“So how many pennies do you think the system – the six of us – can process in one turn?” asked Tom.
“An average amount,” said Ben.
Tom smiled, and said, “That’s right! An average number. And what would that number be?”
“Three,” said Zelda.
“Well, not quite,” said Tom, “because if you add the numbers one, two, three, four, five and six, the total is twenty-one. Divide by six to get the average, and –”
“Three-point-five. That’s the average,” said Ben.
“Right! But you can’t have half a penny, can you?”
“No,” said Amy, “but over time, you’d expect the system to deliver three to four pennies per turn.”
“That’s what you would expect?” asked Tom. “You’d bet your career on that?”
“I think you’re setting me up,” said Amy. “But sure. Why not?”
“Each round has twenty turns, to simulate a month with a five-day work week. So the expectation would be a total of how many pennies per month?” he asked.
“Seventy,” said Amy.
“Yes, three-point-five times twenty equals seventy,” said Tom. “But, hey, let’s cut ourselves some slack. Let’s say our target is sixty-five.”
“No, I think if we all try hard, we can do seventy,” Amy joked. “We just need to blow on the dice once in a while for luck.”
“Okay! She’s the boss! Seventy is the target,” said Tom. “Now remember, what we’re simulating here is a balanced system – a balanced processing line. We each have one die, even me. So we each have exactly the same capacity. It’s a level playing field, just like Lean says you should have.”
“Okay,” said Amy. “Let’s go.”
“One last thing. Everybody, except me, starts with four pennies each on the table. I am the penny vendor, so I have lots of pennies. We all roll dice at the same time, and you can only move the number of pennies that your die rolls – if you have them. So if Ben rolls a three, that allows him to move three pennies to Michelle if he has them in front of him to move. Let’s say that during the game he only has two pennies and he rolls a four, then he can only move two, because that’s all he’s got. And it’s the same for everyone else. Are we ready? Everybody roll …”
The dice chattered on the tabletop.
Tom rolled a four, Ben rolled a two, Michelle