I know in my last posting I said I was going to discuss more throughput accounting metrics, but today I went to vote early and I had an experience to tell you about. When my wife and I got out of our car, there was already a very long line of people waiting to vote. As I stood in line watching the long queue of
voters and how incredibly slow it was moving, it occurred to me that they (the
poll workers) could use some help. As I
stood in line every so often a “batch” of people was moved into the voting
area, probably around 10 at a time. I’ve
written about batching before on my blog and how ineffective it is. I was sure once I entered the area where the
voting machines were that I could help them speed up this process….or so I
thought. I had imagined that the poll
workers waited until 10 voting machines were available and they would summon
the next batch of people. Figure 1 is a
drawing of the actual voting process, but all I saw initially was a long line of people and the apparent batching of voters.
Figure
1
Step
1 was my wife and I exiting our car and getting into a long line of people
waiting to vote. Steps 2, 3, and 4,
which I hadn’t seen yet, were a series of steps in place that had to be
completed before you could vote. I
thought to myself, I’ll bet this process would be ideal for Drum Buffer Rope or
even better, Multiple Drum Buffer Rope that I have written about before on this
blog. I just knew that I could speed up
the voting process if I could just get anyone willing to listen to me.
For
those of you who have read my blog, you know what Drum Buffer Rope is. For those of you who don’t know what it is,
here’s a basic explanation. The drum is the constraint in the process and one of the things we know about the
constraint is that you can never let it sit idle. In front of the drum is a buffer of whatever it is you are trying
to move through the process which in this case was voters. When something exits the constraint, there is
a signal (i.e. the rope) sent to
introduce more raw material (i.e. voters in our process) into the process so that the process
is very well synchronized. Before I entered the
voting room, I had envisioned that the voting machine was the drum (i.e. the constraint) and since I
knew they had multiple voting machines, then what we had was an example of multiple drums. Yes, multiple drum buffer rope was exactly
what the poll workers needed!! I was
getting excited to be able to speed up this voting process. The batches kept moving
slowly until finally I entered the voting room.
What
I saw when I entered simply amazed me!
What I had envisioned was a batching type arrangement where when 10
voting booths were available, the poll workers would bring 10 more voters into
the room, but such was not the case.
What I saw was a very well synchronized flow with multiple drum buffer
rope in place. I’m certain that none of
the poll workers had ever heard of the Theory of Constraints, but they were
definitely using a version of it. As
seats emptied in Step 2, one of the poll workers would summon people to fill
those seats immediately from a queue of people waiting to enter the voting area.
As places in line (a buffer of sorts) became available in Step 3, these
same poll workers would position voters to take their place, again immediately. Step 4 was definitely an example of single piece flow since as
one voter finished registering, another voter immediately took their
place. The poll machines, all 12 of
them, were, in fact, not the constraint as I had imagined. The constraint was actually Step 2, people filling out paperwork, and the
poll workers had that covered with a buffer and a rope!
As
I was leaving the voting place, I stopped and told all of the poll workers that
they were doing a great job and everyone one of them, without exception, told me that nobody had
ever told them that before. When I
exited the building, I turned and blessed them all and made them honorary Jonah’s. Isn’t that what Eli Goldratt would have done?
Bob
Sproull
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