Inherited Simplicity – More

I am a Chinese, no doubt.  Having been socialized by the Chinese society, it will be advantageous to maintain oneself in low key.  But being in low key, from another angle, it can mean being prudent and no complacency.

I am an Accountant, no ambiguity.  Having been working in Finance/Accounting for 20 years, it is not persuasive to convince people that I can do supply chain management, particularly when I just apply the basic formula: Beginning Inventory + Incoming – Outgoing = Ending Inventory, together with Excel/VBA programming to build forecasting model in different perspective for inventory, let alone, applying Excel in production scheduling.

I am always a junior manager,  no luck.  Although I had ever been in senior position – with Director or Controller title for > 10 years, I still insist in looking at detail level and resist just looking at ppt files.  Unquestionably, my ppt presentation is comparatively week.  My low sensitivity to color/image/graphics has kept me a working level manager.

I am a grassroots trainer, no exaggeration.  What I talked during all the training seminars is that it is always the best interest of the factory to treat the operators/line leaders/supervisors well, especially the line leaders.  They can be the pivotal human capital, check the materials usage, minimize wastage, record labor hours being used and close job orders.  This is the basis of product costing.  Accountant can only accumulate data in an inefficient manner, only the line leaders are the owner of the profit & loss of a production line.  To my delight, I got some applause last Friday & Saturday (Sep 23 & 24) when giving seminars of internal control in Hong Kong Productivity Council while talking about the innocent working group – line leaders .

I am a Excel/VBA programmer in the current supply chain project, no kidding.  I was very upset when I tried to convince my project manager and the team leader to adopt the models and methodology I developed in wire harness company (you can go to check the file – MRP fine tuning in my box.net) to the current supply chain project and they rejected.  As I am a typical Chinese, I can keep in low key.  As I am an accountant, I can work according to instruction.  As I am always a junior manager, I have to accumulate working knowledge in order to grow.  As I am a grassroots trainer, I need to sort out some interesting stories – most likely funny fiasco in order to attract the attention of my attendants.

Eliyahu Goldratt talked about inherited simplicity and the syndrome: “when it is embarrassingly right, it must be correct”.  Unfortunately, we can find instances everywhere.  When the project manager and the team leader insisted me on building a production scheduling model in such a manner – 1 SKU for an injection machine for a full week which is totally in contradiction to inventory management, pull system, lean manufacturing, TOC & etc,  I felt desperate with my position – I am just a programmer as told.  What I have to do is follow instruction!  Anyway, I did it as I am too junior to object it.  Their explanation is “this is a special organization”.  (It is totally a geek!)

Not until a day the stakeholder complains the absurdity, the ridicule would have been covered up by the stooges.  Well, all other guys are gone.  I am the survival member of the team and turn back to my original suggestion – applying the folk knowledge (Beginning Inventory + Incoming – Outgoing = Ending Inventory, derive the “incoming” component), working on SKU level, raise up the pivotal role – the planner in factory, doing something very fundamental, building Excel template and model.  Not surprisingly, the stakeholder welcomes it.  But, we already lost the precious resources – time.

The function of Assimilation

As mentioned before, I am reading a book of Consumer Behavior.  I happen to know that almost all the theories are based on psychology and sociology.  I can find a lot of terminology of sociology, like socialization and interaction.  Again, I come across assimilation. 

Assimilation: to bring into conformity with the customs, attitudes, etc., of a group, nation, or the like; adapt or adjust: to assimilate the new immigrants(Dictionary.com).  The subject is the majority – the society, while the minority is the object.  It is the majority or the community that exert influence, in other words, by clarifying what is right or wrong, good or bad, the minority will come to realize that it is a right way to change his/her values.

Acculturation: the process of adopting the cultural traits or social patterns of another group (Dictionary.com).  The minority or the individual is the subject while the object is the majority or the society.  It is the process undertaken by the individual for the sake of harmony or survival.  It is nothing right or wrong, good or bad; rather it is a matter of gain or loss.  It is utilitarianism.

Why is there assimilation from an organization towards an individual?  Simply speaking, it is to avoid uncertainty, to change his/her values which is being expressed by the behavior of the minority, the majority will treat the minority as member of the society and will pose less suspicion.  Failure to be assimilated means that the minority will be excluded from the society.  From utility perspective, the absorption of the target assimilated will bring some benefit to the society/organization, or at least will not bring any harm to the society.

Acculturation is a pessimistic way.  It seems that it is only way for the minority to survive if he/she does not match with the customs/practice of the minority.  He/She is implicitly pressurized to do it.  The underlying mindset may not change at all.

Human is contradictory beings.  If it is voluntary act, it is fine.  If not, it is only a repression and will override a day after all.  He/she may say it is a subjection act, no reliability at all.

As a leader of an organization, should we do assimilation or request acculturation of the newcomers?

The function of assimilation is not to avoid uncertainty but to attain real integration and promote reliability as well.

Production Scheduling – II

There is no complicated mathematical calculation in production scheduling.  Rather, it is all matters of sorting: First-in-First-serve.  A sales order may be served by > 1 production lines, broken into different batch sizes and completed in different time frame.  It would be simpler if it is in single processing, much complicated if sequential processing.  The way to retrieve the schedules from various production lines are critical.  There should be a person who master the whole schedule, i.e.

1. input the requirement if inventory is necessary or demand/sales order if it is make-to-order
2. sort out the missing parameters, like hourly capacity, new product specification (that means what production line can be used for this particular product), headcount, running time, maintenance of production lines
3. check out the result and sort out what orders or quantity being not met
4. send out line schedule to production manager/supervisor/line leaders/materials feeders/warehouse so that they can work with the schedule for headcount preparation, materials feeding and workforce plan
5. send out the starting/ending schedule to sales & marketing so that they could respond to any enquiry from customers about pull-in and push-out of delivery which in turn is determined by the completion date.
6. Benchmark the plan with actual production and measure what is being done
7. All in all, eliminate any waiting in between job orders.  (But I can tell you that whenever there is sequential processing, there is no way to eliminate any waiting time.  I will elaborate in next blog entry.  Only 1-piece flow can.)

It is nothing complicated but straightforward.