Family Business and Chaos Theory

 
Family Business and Chaos Theory.

Our Team continued to work at the family’s manufacturing plant. Improvement is difficult without stability. Do you know anything about the chaos theory? It has to do with fractal mathematics. A fractal is a natural phenomenon or a mathematical set that exhibits a repeating pattern that displays at every scale. Chaos theory says there is order and even great beauty in what looks like total chaos. That if we look closely enough at the randomness around us that patterns will start to emerge.

Improvement in a family business is difficult without stability. Improvement in a process is difficult without stability. Process Stability refers to the consistency of the process with respect to important process characteristics such as the average value of a key dimension or the variation in that key dimension. If the process behaves consistently over time, then we say that the process is stable or in control.

Statistical Process Control Charts are utilized to determine if the process is stable or not. Some charts are used to assess the stability of the process location (for example, xbar charts that monitor the process average), other charts are used to assess the stability of the process variation (for example, range or standard deviation charts).

Sometimes early process stability can be defined as manpower, uptime and material, technique. Early stability might be defined as the building blocks. Sometimes we forget the simplicity of eliminating the constraints.

The Goal is a management-oriented novel by Dr. Eliyahu M. Goldratt, a business consultant whose Theory of Constraints has become a model for systems management.

The book goes on to point out the role of bottlenecks (constraints) in a manufacturing process, and how identifying them not only makes it possible to reduce their impact, but also yields a useful tool for measuring and controlling the flow of materials. Alex and his team identify the bottlenecks in their process and immediately begin to implement changes to help speed up capacity.

In response to questions about the logic of using outdated technology in modern manufacturing, Alex’s team brought in an old machine they received for free (which had previously been used at their plant in conjunction with two other machines) in order to increase the capacity of the NCX-10 machine, which had been identified as one of the two bottlenecks. Furthermore, they identified processes at the heat treat, identified as their second bottleneck, that caused massive delays in their getting product through the heat-treat heat-treated multiple times (to make softer and then harder again) instead of just once or not at all.

The Family Business we were working on was very similar to Alex’s plant.

Before stability there must be flow. You need inventory in front of the cells . Chaos theory talks of patterns. Some patterns our team was working to change include safety, staffing and uptime. We brought in our mechanics did the overdue PMs and fixed the leaks.

A pattern is is a discernible regularity in the world or in a manmade design. The team made the pattern. First step in solving any problem is admitting we have a problem.