Folks,
Two weeks passed quickly and The Professor returned to ACME. Patty met him at the door. "Professor, it's great to see you," Patty said with enthusiasm. "We collected the uptime data in real time on a laptop, no one has seen that results yet. We wanted it to be a surprise," said Patty. The Professor suggested that he go out on the shop floor to observe the manufacturing activities until shortly after lunch. He pointed out that his observations may help to understand the uptime results.
The morning seemed to drag for Patty, she was very anxious to see the resets of the uptime data. She bet Pete a dinner for two that the uptime would not be more than 50%. If she wins, Pete and his wife will treat her and her boyfriend Jason to dinner at the restaurant of her choice.
Around 1:30PM The Professor suggested that he was ready for the meeting. Patty had written a simple Excel® macro to perform the calculations for the uptime. She only had to push a button and he whole room would see the result in a moment, as Patty connected her laptop to a projector. There was tension in the air, friendly wagers had been made, but the entire process team realized that their reputation was on the line.
When the number emerged on the screen, John, the manager's face became ashen. Pete's visage was redder than two weeks ago. John thought, "I should be fired. How could I manage this team for 5 years and not know that our up time was only 9.7%." Patty was thinking about her choice of restaurants.
John asked The Professor, "How can we be so bad?" The Professor responded, "The good news is that there are tremendous opportunities for improvement. After observing the operations out on the floor this morning, I think we can get it the uptime to greater than 40%." Pete shot back, "You're kidding, only 40%?" "I've only seen two operations that have greater than 45% uptime, and I've been to over 150 facilities world-wide," answered The Professor.
"Where do we start?," asked John. "How about lunch,?" beamed The Professor. "We just had lunch!," Pete groaned. "No, no Pete," The Professor chuckled, "I mean how lunch is handled out on the line. Lunch costs the company more than 1 and ½ hours of production in an eight hour shift. That's nearly 20% of the entire shift." Now John was a little agitated. "Professor, lunch is only 30 minutes. We purposely have a short lunch period to avoid the line being down for a long time," John said with a note of annoyance. "John, this is true, but I watched what the operators did. Lunch is supposed to start at 12 noon, but the operators turn the line off at 11:40AM. They don't get back to the line until 12: 40PM and it takes them more than 30 minutes to get the line running again. Today the line was not running until 1:15PM. It was down for 1 hour and 35 minutes, stated The Professor."
John thought again, "Yes, I should really be fired."
Will John keep his job? What restaurant will Patty choose for dinner? What should be done about lunch? Where are all of the other hours lost? Stay tuned for the answers to these and other questions on May 30.
Cheers,
Dr. Ron