{"id":696,"date":"2011-03-05T16:17:05","date_gmt":"2011-03-05T16:17:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saasoft.com\/blog\/?p=696"},"modified":"2011-03-05T16:17:05","modified_gmt":"2011-03-05T16:17:05","slug":"jit-wip-lip-and-pip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/?p=696","title":{"rendered":"JIT, WIP, LIP and PIP"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>It is a fantastic feeling when a piece of the jigsaw falls into place and suddenly an important part of the bigger picture emerges. Feelings of confusion,\u00a0anxiety and\u00a0threat\u00a0dissipate\u00a0and are replaced by a sense\u00a0of insight, calm and opportunitity.<\/p>\n

Improvement Science is about 80% subjective\u00a0and 20% objective: more cultural\u00a0than technical – but the technical parts are\u00a0necessary. Processes obey the Laws of Physics – and unlike the Laws of People these\u00a0not open to appeal or repeal. So when an essential piece of\u00a0process physics is\u00a0missing the\u00a0picture is incomplete and\u00a0confusion\u00a0reigns.<\/p>\n

One piece of the process physics\u00a0jigsaw is JIT (Just-In-Time) and process improvement\u00a0zealots rant\u00a0on about\u00a0JIT as if it were some sort of\u00a0Holy Grail of Improvement Science.\u00a0 JIT means what you need arrives just when you need it – which implies that\u00a0there is no waiting of it-for-you or you-for-it.\u00a0\u00a0JIT\u00a0is\u00a0an\u00a0important\u00a0output<\/strong>\u00a0of an improved process; it is\u00a0not an input<\/strong>!\u00a0 The danger of\u00a0confusing\u00a0output\u00a0with input\u00a0is that we may then try to\u00a0use\u00a0delivery time\u00a0as a mangement metric rather than a performance metric\u00a0– and if we do that we get ourselves into a lot of trouble.\u00a0Delivery time targets are often set and enforced and to a large extent fail to achieve their intention because of this confusion.\u00a0 To understand how<\/strong> to achieve JIT requires\u00a0more\u00a0pieces of the process physics\u00a0jigsaw. The\u00a0piece that goes next to\u00a0JIT is\u00a0labelled WIP (Work In Progress) which is\u00a0the number of jobs that are somewhere between starting and finishing.\u00a0 JIT is achieved when WIP\u00a0is low enough to provide the process with just the right amount of resilience to absorb inevitable variation; and WIP is a\u00a0more useful\u00a0management metric than JIT\u00a0for many reasons\u00a0(which for brevity I will not explain\u00a0here). Monitoring WIP enables a process manager to become\u00a0more proactive because changes in WIP can signal a future problem with JIT – giving enough warning to do something.\u00a0 However,\u00a0although JIT and WIP are necessary they are not sufficient – we need a third piece of the jigsaw to allow us to\u00a0design our process to deliver\u00a0the JIT performance we want.\u00a0 This third piece is called LIP (Load-In-Progress) and is the\u00a0parameter needed to plan and schedule\u00a0 the right capacity at the right place and the right time\u00a0to achieve\u00a0the required WIP and\u00a0JIT.\u00a0 Together these three pieces provide the stepping stones on the\u00a0path to Productivity Improvement Planning (PIP) that is the combination of\u00a0QI (Quality Improvement) and CI (Cost Improvement).<\/p>\n

So if\u00a0we want\u00a0our PIP then\u00a0we need to know our LIP and WIP to get\u00a0the JIT.\u00a0\u00a0Reddit? Geddit?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is a fantastic feeling when a piece of the jigsaw falls into place and suddenly an important part of the bigger picture emerges. Feelings of confusion,\u00a0anxiety and\u00a0threat\u00a0dissipate\u00a0and are replaced by a sense\u00a0of insight, calm and opportunitity. Improvement Science is about 80% subjective\u00a0and 20% objective: more cultural\u00a0than technical – but the technical parts are\u00a0necessary. Processes … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “JIT, WIP, LIP and PIP”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,42,43,45,46],"tags":[78,150,159,215,217,224,309],"class_list":["post-696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-productivity","category-how","category-why","category-what","category-teach","tag-cost","tag-just-in-time","tag-load-in-progress","tag-process-physics","tag-productivity","tag-quality","tag-work-in-progress"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}