Chapter 6: Methodology Creating Better Product Flow Planning: From A Gleam In Your Eye To Improved Operating Results

OVERVIEW

Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go fromhere?

That depends a good deal on where you want to get to, said the Cat. I don t much care where said Alice.

Then it doesn t matter which way you go, said theCat.

so long as I get somewhere, Alice added as anexplanation.

Lewis Carroll, Alice s Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter6

The four previous chapters have provided the foundation for improving planning. We havediscussed the history of the field (Chapter 2), defined some fundamental concepts (Chapter 3),reviewed some fundamental planning structures (Chapter 4), and considered planning under differentoperating regimes (Chapter 5). But how do we actually change to better planning processes andsystems? That is the question we will answer here as we present methodology.

First, a caveat. Most of the methodology presented here is not unique, and it certainlycontains no magic. It is mostly common sense and a lot of experience applied to the domain ofplanning. But there are a number of principles presented that are very important and about whichpractitioners frequently become confused and try to go the wrong way. We will try to explain why werecommend the various components of the process, why the perspective on planning that we take isimportant, and how to use some of the specialized tools introduced in Chapter 4.

In this discussion, we will assume that the reader is about to undertake a program to improveplanning for an enterprise. As illustrated in Figure6.1, the planets will align occasionally in such a way...