Fragile to Agile in Production Planning

The business world is becoming increasingly complex and increasingly dynamic. Without structure, it is impossible to deal with the amount of data that is now at a manager's fingertips and with changes that invariably occur. With too much structure, the ability to react to change becomes difficult. Striking a successful balance between chaos and rigidity requires a new, creative mindset. Disorganized chaos leads to bankruptcy; organized chaos is the path to success.

Where “fragile to agile” comes in

A recent Industry Week article describes the difficulty in finding a middle ground on the chaos continuum: if operations are built strong, but with no “give” to deal with problems, they will ultimately fail. For example, a process might work smoothly until the day when some unexpected downtime occurs; a situation like that can ripple throughout the company causing additional concerns. Building in flexibility allows response to smaller problems as they arise, fixing them and getting back to work quickly—that is, being agile. Controlling the minor difficulties allows a manufacturer to avoid massive, company-damaging problems.

How to make an organization agile

Often, problem solving occurs in “crisis mode” and in a rigidly structured environment. When something unanticipated crops up, it is all hands on deck, and the problem gets solved. However, in the meantime, production processes are disrupted, workers stand around waiting, labor costs mount, product is not manufactured, and customers are not satisfied. That is a snapshot of a fragile company. The agile manufacturing firm, on the other hand, has processes, tools and training in place to respond quickly to changes while continuing to control costs and product quality.

Anticipate change to generate confidence

An agile firm understands that responding quickly is not the full picture. Preplanning for problems must be implanted into the behavior of all employees. All possibilities need to be defined, and solutions determined, ahead of time. Problem-solving before the fact builds in adaptability and will ensure the ability to pick up problems early while they are still minor. Then, employees will not fall into the blame-game, but rather can flip easily to the right screen to bring operations back on-line. As well, a review of the reason for the problem becomes a consistent part of the post-analysis so that future processes can be improved. These feedback iterations can lead to fewer and even smaller issues in the future.

This method of dealing with chaos is particularly useful in lean manufacturing. Just-in-time systems will magnify problems that disrupt processing flows. If a firm is intelligent enough to highlight issues quickly and has problem-solved ahead, it will be agile enough to deal with those problems quickly—it is as if the system heals itself.

Once an agile system is in place, much of the response to small adjustments can be automated. This requires careful data collection, agreed-upon operational standards sets, a full definition of goals and success, and the right software to handle complexity, in real-time, with realistic solutions.