Apparent vs. True Efficiencies: Are Apparent Efficiencies still Valuable?

[duecesevenOS]

As I understand it apparent efficiency is increasing the capability of the operators or equipment without decreasing the work force or having a higher demand. True increased efficiency comes from either eliminating workers, eliminating excess equipment, or increasing product SOLD.

Asutherland brought up this distinction in another thread and I would like to see some more discussion on it. One of the firm thoughts in Toyota's lean model is the idea of no layoffs. So if you keep increasing efficiency and do not decrease your labor force, how does the increased apparent efficiency effect your profit margins. No amount of increase in efficiency for the labor force will ever decrease costs unless there is also an necessity for increased capacity (more customer demand)

Obviously, there are more benefits to the Toyota Production System then just the increased throughput of a leaner factory. We've been implementing TPS pretty extensively on my fabrication line. I know how much more efficient my workers are now and have even done the calculation of how much less walking time they waste and so on. The changes are obvious and they are obviously beneficial.

But they do NOT increase the true efficiency of my area. We are not going to layoff any employees and our customer demand is not increasing as a result of this product. The efficiency of the worker HAS increased however and now they have the ability to do other things. Keeping equipment more operational and in better condition because the workers now have time to keep things clean.

I guess what I'm trying to get at is, I think apparent efficiency improvement has a lot of benefits. Do you guys agree? Would you report apparent efficiency increases to your management/supervision? Have any of you ever tried to quantify the benefits of having workers that have more time to do maintenance, inspections, process control checks, etc, etc.

[asutherland]

Originally Posted by duecesevenOS

I guess what I'm trying to get at is, I think apparent efficiency improvement has a lot of benefits. Do you guys agree? Would you report apparent efficiency increases to your management/supervision? Have any of you ever tried to quantify the benefits of having workers that have more time to do maintenance, inspections, process control checks, etc, etc.

The problem with many kaizen activities is that they focus on apparent efficiency and proclaim this great savings that do not effect the bottom line.

Are apparent efficiency improvements benificial? Absolutely.

What is more benificial is working on the bottleneck constraint. With small gains here, you capture big gains throught your final out-put.


As for being able to maintain volume after an improvement has been made, keeping the extra people on the line is a mistake. I am not recommending we let them go..... I am suggesting that this now becomes a resource for other activites away from the line. Attrition will always bring people back to the line, and when that happens, you convert the apparent effeciency into true efficiency.

[duecesevenOS]

I understand what your saying about the bottlenecks. Unfortunately I'm a young engineer working in a specific area. I've been tasked with TPS for my specific area so I can't choose the bottlenecks of our entire plant. We do have micro-bottle necks in our area however. Machine downtime is the bottleneck we are currently working on because access to machines and machine thoughput is the constraint that holds back my area most. If we could keep our machines running at higher efficiencies then we could produce parts faster and eliminate overtime. Thus giving us true efficiency gain.

[asutherland]

hummmmmmmm,

reducing your machine downtime from X to Y is not a cost savings event.

When your machines were new (or newer) I'm sure that they did not break down all the time, there for your efficiency decreased.

Getting the efficiency back up is not a kaizen event . . . Its more of an TPM event, and, even if you get them to a condiditon of new, you will still not have increased your effieciecy . . . you will simply have brought it back to where it should be.

[duecesevenOS]

You are right but you are also wrong

If i were speaking of reducing the number of incidents that cause downtime then I would of course be talking about TPM and that would line up with what you are saying (that's a whole different topic for a whole different thread some time). The machine downtime I am working on is to reduce the downtime per incident however. This is basically increasing the worker efficiency when a machine goes down in order to limit the amount of downtime caused by each incident.

Thanks

Duece

[asutherland]

Originally Posted by duecesevenOS

You are right but you are also wrong
The machine downtime I am working on is to reduce the downtime per incident however. This is basically increasing the worker efficiency when a machine goes down in order to limit the amount of downtime caused by each incident.

Thanks

Duece

A machine process is different that a human motion process.

If the human montion process is improved then you can increase worker efficiency.

If a machine goes down, the machine is not making parts when it should. Of course the 'machine' efficiency goes down, but this is a mechanical problem. Which is a TPM problem.