TABLE OF CONTENTS Managers, supporting departments, and the direct labor unintentionally can cause available capacity to be misused and lost.
Inappropriate or misused information systems can result in reduced capacity.
You should know what the source of your problems is. If you are losing capacity, what are the causes, what can be done?
There are the people in production control and there are the others. At the plant where Ralph worked, most of the others actually helped production control and were positive forces. There are many plants where this is true. Everyone knows what people should do to help and be a positive force. In this chapter, we will talk about the types of things that are less than satisfactory.
First, who are these others? Well, they can be management, peers, and/or people doing the work on the factory floor. Each of these groups can do things to lose capacity or to damage the manufacturing capability. We will take each in turn and discuss the naughty things that these people do. Unfortunately, all we can do is identify the naughty action or practice. Most actions are accidental and are not intentional. The perpetrators just do not know the damage that they are causing. Other damaging actions, however, are conscious. These are policies or decisions made for short-term gain and that will incur long-term pain. These actions are not healthy for a plant.
The source of the damage is often outside of the authority or...
