VELOCITY - DEE JACOB [80]
At first, Viktor Kyzanski vociferously resisted this arrangement – Viktor wanted his factory. Amy finally convinced him that he was not going to get it, and Viktor relented.
To replace Murphy at Oakton, Kurt Konani was named production manager. Jayro Pepps was closely considered for the position, but Wayne argued that at this crucial time he needed someone fully imbued in Lean and Six Sigma. Jayro was only an LSS Green Belt. Amy agreed to give Wayne what he wanted, on condition that once Kurt had moved on – as presumably he would once the Lean cultural change was in place – Jayro would be first in line to replace him.
Jayro, for his part, was fine with this. He quietly let it be known that he was not sure he really wanted to run Oakton. Not now at least.
“Some little feelin’ I got,” Jayro said under his breath.
Amy was pleased with herself in arranging the whole thing. From her point of view, moving Murphy to Rockville was win-win all around. Murphy’s experience was bound to be of value to F&D. The move would let Murphy stay within Hi-T probably until retirement without losing much, and he would keep all his benefits. Moreover, the new position was a means of moving Murph out of Wayne’s way, but still keep him a phone call away – just in case.
She asked Murphy to sit down with her for what was in effect an exit interview, although the move was a transfer, not a termination. When Murphy’s stocky frame filled her doorway on the appointed day, she sat him down and looked at his broad face and his receding silver-gray hair, and then decided his face had more color and his blue eyes were much cheerier than they had been. When she commented tactfully on this, he said that he had been sleeping better of late.
They talked about things, and then Amy said to Murphy, “I just have one more question. Not to open old wounds, but the system constraint at Oakton. You say it’s the autoclave, Godzilla.”
“Yes, ma’am, it is.”
“Wayne says that he is setting the M57 Line to be the system constraint.”
“No way,” said Murphy. “It won’t work.”
“But he’s establishing the M57 Line as being what he called ‘the pacemaker process.’ ”
“I do not understand Lean as completely as Wayne Reese. Heck, I don’t even advocate Lean necessarily. But a system constraint and a pacemaker process are not the same.”
“They’re not?”
“No, though I believe they are often confused with each other. A system constraint, managed properly, functions very well given ample reserve capacity both upstream and down. A pacemaker attempts a similar function, but does so with everything quote-unquote ‘-leveled’ – the balanced line. When real-world variability enters the equation, you’ve got problems.”
“Like what kind of problems?” asked Amy.
“The pacemaker process is still ticking along, trying to act like a clock, like everything else will also behave like a clock. But if any of the little clocks get out of synch with the big clock – the central clock, the pacemaker – they do not have the juice to run faster.”
“Why not?”
“Because Wayne leaned them. He trimmed the mainspring on every clock. They can only tick so fast. He’s balanced the line, but that means everything has to run perfectly at close to one hundred percent. So he’s tightened the capacity of every resource. He did it in the name of eliminating waste. But you know what happens when you do that, don’t you?”
“I don’t know, Murph. Tell me.”
“You end up with the potential for any resource to become a bottleneck.”
“How so? I’m trying to understand here, but …”
“With a system constraint, you have one bottleneck – a primary constraint – and you know where it is. With a balanced line, even with a pacemaker, due to trimmed capacity and too little reserve, you potentially can have a lot of bottlenecks. So they will seem to pop up here and pop up there, all over the place.”
Amy stared at Murphy,