It’s the nightmare of many high schoolers. “Solve for X”. Many will, however, do well in algebra. Some will learn that the critical thinking skills are transferrable to other applications that are not traditionally considered math. And really, everything can be represented as math. But this writing isn’t really about algebra.
Often, the failure of solving algebra is misunderstanding the nature of it. Misunderstanding the nature of a problem makes it difficult to get the right answer.
Solutions to operations issues often do not yield the impact that was expected at implementation. There is more truth to this when the solution is developed “on the fly”. This loss of optimization is not necessarily due to poor solution skills. It is often due to poor problem definition.
For example: A distribution facility is struggling to meet their shipping times. We all know failure of service proposition is deadly. To improve picking capacity, the business adds pickers. The items that are causing many failures are those inbound items that are stuck on the receiving dock. So that these delayed items do not miss ship dates, the receiving dock is set to be a pickable location. The distance to the dock from the major pick lanes increases the average transit time enough that even more pickers are added to accommodate the change. So, the facility has improved the fill rates and is meeting its service proposition. It won’t be long, though, until the added expense of additional pickers shows up on the P&L. Then there are the additional inventory control personnel needed to clean up the problems with the locator.
A more holistic solution to this situation would have been to work on dock-to-stock times. We have found this problem in many manufacturing and distribution facilities. It is often related to IT constraints or internal processing delays. While our example above is not an indictment of the facility’s ability to solve problems, it is a statement about the ability to frame the problem correctly.
We see this most often in manufacturing with production scheduling. Manufacturing leaders are often given a series of work orders to complete, often with differing priorities and deadlines.
It is our opinion that this is not a schedule, but a bill of requirements. Scheduling systems, in particular those for facilities with multiple products and manufacturing work centers, should optimize batch or run sizes and the timing of these production subsets. Most importantly, scheduling systems should maximize capacity and create usable timing for completions to meet demand.
The scheduling needs of each business are usually very precise. They are driven by it’s equipment, personnel, plant layout, product mix, sales volatility, finished goods inventory level, raw material requirements…. The idea is to take the complication of organizing the mountain of inputs and requirements off the shop floor leadership and to put it into the scheduling algorithm. While a complicated and sometimes expensive exercise, it frees shop floor leaders to lead and improve their domain. Even with the best ERPs, this takes some careful design. This is not an out-of-the-box solution. But solving for scheduling reduces overhead on so many other areas that it is a worthwhile exercise.
More generally, though, framing the problem correctly is paramount to getting the best solution. Incorrectly framing the problem creates an environment where not solving the real problem leads to the creation of more problems.
Before you embark on a project to solve a problem, consider getting an outside perspective on how you have framed it. Title 2 Business Services was created to help clients properly frame problems and solve them through process design, facility layout and IT solutions to support a well-defined operation.