Your System is Perfectly Designed to Get What You Get

Your System is Perfectly Designed to Get What You Get

The best operations put their effort into the systems that will produce the results their customers demand. They focus their attention on the interacting steps, actions, and elements that make up the processes and procedures the organization follows. They see problems as system issues and make changes to their systems. They use leader’s standard work to test the health of their systems. It is their attention to the details of their systems that lead them to great results!

Struggling organizations also have systems. They also have interacting steps, actions, and elements that make up the processes and procedures the organization follows, but they don’t realize it. They see problems as poor circumstances, dumb luck, or even worse, poor performing people. These organizations are actually perfectly designed to get exactly the poor results they get.

Systems perfectly designed for poor results

Many organizations suffer from poor delivery performance. The sales department quotes a lead-time to a customer, who places the order with the agreed upon delivery date, only to receive the product days, weeks, or even months later. Some customer’s reaction to this situation is to order more product earlier, which actually compounds the problem.

Often these struggling organizations have a process for entering the customer order into their system. They allow scheduling software to schedule the steps necessary to produce the product, working backward from the shipping process to the purchase of raw material. The scheduling software typically considers queue times, efficiency variables, and available inventory. The plan created is reasonable based on the assumptions of the software.

However, the system does not end there. These same organizations may have a policy allowing the work centers that process the material to rearrange the scheduled orders to optimize set-up time in their area. This policy may not even be written or expressed, but is informally in place because of years of culture where success is measured in pieces per hour. This results in the delay of almost all orders because the system is perfectly designed to create those delays.

Systems perfectly designed for great results

Great organizations have reliable delivery performance. The sales department quotes a lead-time to a customer, who places the order with the agreed upon delivery date. The customer receives the product on that day or in the week agreed. Customers react to this situation by ordering only the product they need when they need it, helping the great organization continue the good delivery performance.

These great organizations sometimes have the same scheduling software. And like the struggling organizations, the system does not end there. They then have formal written procedures for how the schedules at the work centers are processed. They may in fact allow for rearranging the schedule BUT within a pre-specified window of time, such as 12 hours. The policy is audited through leader’s standard work and most importantly, when the policy cannot be followed, a red flag is raised and the organization reacts.

Struggling organizations and great organizations both have systems that are perfectly designed to get what they get. The difference the great organizations realize it and put their efforts into understanding and improving the system.

Help your organization understand the systems that give them exactly what they are getting.

Learn more in Patrick’s book, “Facilitating Effective Change,” available online through Amazon and Barnes & Noble.