40
Long rant: Almost every CEO misinterprets LEAN / Theory of Constraints philosophy. The goal is to track ypur product through /dev/production/manufacturing etc and only focus on improving flow and remove hinderences. By tracking that as focus and not $ you improve the system and product, and the savings of waste take care of the $. in the theory is a maxim of (manufacturing version) a workpiece product should never wait on a machine. This means a piece ready for work to be done should be able to move to next workstation and have an open resource ready, if that means two machines, with one idle typically, that is fine, since it means every stage can move forward to next and piece is accommodated. Some how almost every CEO interprets this to mean we buy one machine and schedule it for 100% uptime so it doesn't wait empty. (Their lease or purchase accounting even encourages this so they can show a lower cost per hour, even though that machine is a sunk cost you have to pay for regardless of use %) This mindset forces waste and bottle necks to various other parts of system and creates inefficiencies. When they see failures they start messing elswhere and then firing staff to cut labour overhead when they are focuse on profit, not improvement.