Game in the Brain

Local Optimums.
Short term gains can that sabotages your long term goals. An in production the Long Term goal is Throughput (Making stuff that leaves the Factory Floor and allows Invoices to be Issued).

Then there is the Opposite of What appears to be Short Term Gains, actually is intended to Improve the overall flow. The most common example is buying Good Quality Equipment to save time for our personal life.

Someone will say you spent way too much on shoes, I spent 150usd on my Rockport Water proof chukkas and 40usd on the inserts but I only wear ONE PAIR of shoes 5 days a week, rain or shine. Someone can say a person overspent on a 1,500usd Work Computer Set up but that person works on that computer 20-30 hours a week and the output he generates from that computer contributes to 80% of his performance.

Sometimes we see SPLURGING and Sometimess we see Pointless Miserliness. Optimums and Efficiency is always against the Goals and Objectives. For us regular people: Time and Money is the goal of WORK, which echoes very much like Throughput, Opex, and Inventory. So much of the Metrics can be carried into Personal Operations when we consider replacing the process of approaching problems and optimizations in our work or our life.

I just finished Listening to an Audible of The GOal about a week ago

MONITORING SYSTEMS
I’m Selling 80% of my AIRSOFT GEAR worth about 1,500 usd and have had about expenses of about 3,000 usd in the years of 2007 to 2015. Which is strangely as expensive as 1 high end airsoft rifle for someone people.

I’m selling them to get 2 or 3 ASUS X507 to allow the Planning and Control Coodinator to GANTT projects instead of using her Dual Core (2008 computer) and the other coordnator of Carpentry of the same computer. I need to be able to Have A GANTT because our Projects END TO END.

The Wife is Supportive. I can’t really think about the Company’s ability to Finance any of my Projects because we are not there yet – we don’t Department Performance Budgets because we never Documented the Entire Life cycle of a Yearly opeations to PREDICT next years budget and Needs. WE NEVER LEARNED – which is what it boils down to.

Note that I’m the Son of the Owner so its kinda weird, I know Cashflow Negative (like most Construction and Manufacturing). And its an ENTIRE GENERATION of Difference in understanding the business and what we are doing. Its Bad but in Context – the World Is Dark, unfair, and unforgiving. Good people suffer everyday and so small groups will throw the entire world into chaos for cheap vain luxuries… this is our world and good people just shrug and say – I can gamble against those small group but Powerful and achieve nothing or help those I can and die trying to help others. To gamble good things is for another group of people, mend what we can is all I can do – remember I’m no body – a gamer who thinks he knows manufacturing and construction. When enough good people satisfied enough to do just this – it can be pretty impressive what can be achieved despite the Power of Entropy. 

getting back to the point

What!?! We dont have data of any project from Start to Finish? Yes – we don’t. How can you solve for the FLOW CONSTRAINTS if you cannot put ALL THE PROJECTS side by side to see the FLOW disruptions. if you think that can be brute forced then you’re fire fighting.

No one tracks DELAYS and excess Inventory, people just track REWORK and Manhours. A worker in the philippines may earn as much as 50-70php an hour but if His activity causes a reduced Capacity to our total throughput that delay is worth the UNIT of capacity it has lost. Which is in the 700-1000usd

We have many processes since we are WORKSHOP/JOB ORDER type plant, we do not have 1 production LINE. We have 3 Major Lines: Metal, System/Standadized Furniture, and Carpentry/Customized Furnture (american and philippine language of these terms will confuse many people).

SO even more so we need END TO END documentation. The value of the DATA is equal to the CONTROL over a FLOW.  Without COntrol you cannot meet Deadlines and You cannot TAKE OPPORTUNITIES so the COST of these lost opportunities (documented and verified, and quantified) is the VALUE of the Data. Basically: the VALUE of the data + the is the Cost to Correct the SHORTFALL of our Quota in the Plant over the period of time the Problem Will Persist.

PLANT SHORT FALL (a historical value of QUOTA) = or less DATA to Correct the problem + ( Cost to Correct the Problem x the Period the Problem will Persist).

It starts with a  GUESS or Hypothesis how the data will shape our correction. And costing the Probable Solutions first, and Making a CHeap and Affordable TESTABLE thesis that would prove one of the Key factors of fixing the entire Process.

CRITICISMS of THEORY OF CONSTRAINTS

Drum Buffer Rope.
Which is just signaling for Pace – if people have a problem with the signal, then its not for them. I think it is much ignored that Complex problems and their Solutions only work for their Problems – its not for All systems. There are principles to learn but

Consider a BUDGET for fixing a solution, a Developing Job ORder World Plant like ours can Afford to Play and Try DBR – but a High Tech Manufacturing Company may not find DBR adequate and have WAY more money and DATA to try more sophisticated Approaches.

Unacknowledged Debt.
Listening to the Audio Book there is an acknolwedgement of all the Other sciences that paved this way. Saying there is an Absence of Attribution is kind of difficult to verify as that means looking at his body of work and looking for where he failed to mention his sources and other studies. I think if he says that “This is all new, and I developed this on my own and without studying anyone elses work” then that would be clearer for me. He’s accused as Opaque about his Process (which is a heavy accusation – lack of Peer Review).

Still his more detailed Methods, what he is opaque about, is not everything. Its just the more specialized tools and TOC is pretty much enough to look for some Optimization.

PACING AND FLOW
lesson in running and studying : If everything is a  Marathon then you work with Pacing. PACING is FLOW, pacing allows us to determine the rate of FLOW based on our Constraints.

When studying, working, spending time with the family and having relationships it seems that KPI are in order. For relationships its Connection and Experience (and the vain hope we will remember it despite our family’s own memory failures). For studies its the ability to Perform the ability or skill. Time to practice and time for those Neural Connections to form strong bonds.

Our constraints are TIME and Practice. The ability to spend time with people effectively is determined by how much practice we put in making the experience and connection work. The constraints is our communciation, listening, and mental bandwidth. For me – the BOTTLENECK is bandwidth – because I’m constantly distracted with Studying and WORK – Fix the Family Business is my mantra. Everyday i can’t help but explain why I am so busy because I have to FIX the family business.

My studying Constraints are weird: its SLEEP and Exertion. Over-exertion makes distracted and BINGING in distractions, and thus it makes me sleep late. And POOR SLEEP has a 10% and a lot of Negative effects on my Memory and Self Control. Its a “death spiral” from there.

RUNNING PACE. RUNNING FLOW.

In Running i try to maintain long deep breaths and not to “hitting the wall” where my breathing is inefficient. When I run often I can maintain breaths as such at 7-10kph with 3% incline and 10lbs weight. Most of the time its 6.5kph when I’m down.

Breaking the wall is like getting sick – or injured. everything is a long recovery.

Same thing with Studying, 2-4 hours a day. PMP, Chinese, and various tougher things (like COMPTIA LIPC).

Minimizing the Time of Injury, Exhaustion and Recovery, Maximizing Throughput of Steps or Meters.

My breathing is a BOTTLENECK, I grew up with bad lungs like most Developing World Kids. My children will not suffer that same exposure to pollution, but the damage is done. So I have a sensitive dust allergy and I take a lot of mitigations to sleep better (vacuuming the bed with 600w vacuum 1/week, washing before sleep, antihistimies and melatonine, at bed by 8 requirement etc…)

My breath is all I should think about and focus on and controling its efficiency and expanding its Capacity determines my Speed and Pace.