Over ten years ago when I was in fee of automation and instrumentation in a large brewing plant, a modern, Plc bottling line was installed. Before long we began to sense a series of apparently isolated and seemingly random problems on the filler/crowner (the motor that fills and caps the bottle) on a weekly basis.
At one time the bottles would come out half filled. At another, there would be missing caps. Or the water spray meant to cause foaming and drive out air from filled bottles would fail to activate. Or Co2 pressure in the ring tank would fall below what was required to voice flat beer flow and the tank would be filled with foam. And on and on...
Encoder Circuit
Regarding these as cut off problems we spent hours tracing each to its supposed cause, and eliminating it (temporarily, it usually turned out) only to have someone else appear in its place. While battling to solve the each problem, the day would wear on and finally sometime in the afternoon the problems would disappear as inexplicably as they had appeared and output would stabilise for the week. Without fail, the entire saga repeated itself at the start of every output week.
We found out after a number of such grueling weeks that the qoute arose from cleaning operations. usually the line was cleaned using grand spray hoses. The electrical and instrumentation panel controlling the filler/crowner was placed right beside the machine. It was not as tightly sealed as it should have been (faulty introductory installation) and cleaning water sprays found their way into it, creating random short circuits in the panel that resulted in unpredictable motor behaviour. The qoute usually manifested on Monday mornings because the major cleaning of the line was done over the weekend.
Identifying this core issue and remedying it solved the qoute for good.
Some years later, someone else motor - the labeler began to exhibit a series of random malfunctions exciting the label magazine, glue pump and other components. But we had learned. Rather than waste time pursuing each separately, we tried to understand what was tasteless to all of them. It turned out lubricating oil had found its way into the encoder, which controlled the timing of nearly all the functions in the machine.
In this case also, identifying the core issue and remedying it solved the qoute for good.
The two real examples above furnish a lesson that can be generalised to all systems: whenever some problems are occurring at the same time, no matter how seemingly unrelated the problems are, they usually will be caused by a single, or at most a very few core issues. This statement applies no matter the type of principles and no matter how complicated the system. It thus makes sense that in attempting to heighten any system, the first thing to do would be to look beyond the many problems and ferret out their tasteless cause. In Toc parlance, you should recognize the system's constraint.
To do this requires comprehension the interrelationships between the varied parts of the system. For example we would have found our explication earlier if we had understood the principles to include not just the machine, but the habitancy and the operations they carried out.
The above conclusions apply when the principles of interest is the whole organisation, or a whole commerce or furnish chain, or even a whole economy. The proliferation of problems usually suggests one or a very few issues at their core.
How great an impact does the focusing exertion on core problems have on the effectiveness of solutions applied? An electronics business in the Us designed an experiment to write back this demand scientifically. Of their twenty one output plants, they implemented only "Lean" solutions in four plants and only "Six Sigma" solutions in eleven plants. In the remaining six plants, they implemented "Theory of Constraints" solutions (for focusing) in composition with "Lean" and "Six Sigma" (for solving problems in the areas of focus). What were the results like?
In all cases, they achieved some savings. The four "Lean" plants were responsible for 4% of the total savings achieved - about 1% per plant. The eleven "Six Sigma" plants contributed 7% of the total cost savings - less than 1% per plant. The last six plants that used Toc for identifying focus areas contributed 89% of the total cost savings. This is about 15% per plant! That is how foremost it is to focus correction exertion and resources on the right areas!
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