Do It Long Hand If You're In Doubt

I had a great session with one of my clients last week. The management team had been struggling to reach agreement over a course of action, which related to the physical layout of their business. I was asked for my comment and opinion and I said that I couldn't as I didn't have a feel for the options.

After a little more digging it turned out that the decision was being (or attempting to be) made on partial information. No one could really make a decision as the whole thing was incomplete. I said that until the two options were drawn out to scale then I didn't think anyone could make a decision.

So, that's what we did. We measured everything up, we looked at some of the material and machine flows that were causing problems and came up with two complete designs. It didn't take long, but it did allow everyone to come together and reach the agreement that they had failed to previously.

That's the message from this blog post. We're all busy, but not too busy to do a job properly. If your business decisions aren't getting resolved then it might be that you are missing some of the information required. If this is you, then stop, get the information and make sure that you are approaching the decision 'longhand'. Show your workings and get all of the facts. It may appear to make the process longer, but not when you consider the time wasted going backward and forward arguing instead!

Giles Johnston
...optimising MRP systems and re-engineering business processes

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