Some people harbor beliefs of self-doubt and negative thoughts of who they are and what they could possibly become . Others have bad and limiting behaviors that keep showing up when the table is all set for them . Others are heavy laden with past burdens and thoughts that keep pulling them back to the ground when they are set to fly . to improve milling capacity , packaging , and storage . At the end of the day , the whole process could only achieve a capacity equivalent to that of the bottleneck .
CROSSFIRE
Why People And Machines Build Capacities That Are Never Fully Utilized
By Herman Githinji
The graveyard is known to be a place where the dead lie and with them are buried many treasures . Les Brown , once wrote that the graveyard is the richest place on earth because it ’ s here that you find all the hopes and dreams that were never fulfilled , the books that were never written , the songs that were never sung , the inventions that were never shared , the cures that were never discovered , all because someone was too afraid to take that first step , keep with the problem , or determined to carry out their dream .
Apart from those treasures , are there also wasted capacities buried with the dead ? Many people live and die before they achieve their full potential . Do you , in your quiet , ever feel like you are not fully utilizing your education , your experiences , your skills ? Between birth and death is the human journey ; a process of progressive growth . In that process we learn and accumulate a great deal of knowledge , skills , values , experiences in the hope that we will apply them to yield material wealth and other values for a comfortable and happy life . So , what limits us from applying our God ’ s given and acquired abilities and capabilities in order to optimize our productivity ?
When I was the General Manager at Unga Millers , Uganda , we started implementing Kaizen Principles in the company . The initial assessment required that we look at each process and how it flows from the beginning to the end . A seamless flow devoid of waste is what we aimed to achieve . When we mapped the processes , we identified particular places where the flow was either blocked , delayed , confused , or unnecessary . The point where the flow is constricted is a bottleneck . In business , a bottleneck is a point of limitation in a workflow or process that creates congestion and backlog . In real sense it ’ s that narrow section of a bottle .
At Unga Millers , we had invested millions in expanding the capacity of the mill , packaging line , and storage to produce and sell over 5,000 tons of flour a month , but we couldn ' t achieve this productivity due to a single bottleneck . The maize had to be dried to almost 13.5 per cent moisture content . Unfortunately , the drier could only achieve 3,500 tons a month . And because it was old , stoppages due to breakdowns were also many . At best , the drier could only process 3,000 tons a month . That bottleneck made irrelevant the efforts and investment made
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Some people harbor beliefs of self-doubt and negative thoughts of who they are and what they could possibly become . Others have bad and limiting behaviors that keep showing up when the table is all set for them . Others are heavy laden with past burdens and thoughts that keep pulling them back to the ground when they are set to fly . to improve milling capacity , packaging , and storage . At the end of the day , the whole process could only achieve a capacity equivalent to that of the bottleneck .
Therefore , it ' s imperative to identify bottlenecks in every process and either find ways to work around them , remove them , or align the entire process with the capacity of the bottleneck . Bottlenecks are identified by mapping the entire processes through flowcharts and identifying where capacity is constricted and delayed . The 5 Why ’ s Method is another potential tool used for identifying bottlenecks . That questioning processes helps to dive deep into a problem and reveal the root causes . Bottlenecks can also be identified by benchmarking , comparing with what others who have built the same capacities are achieving .
At Unga , when we identified the drier as the main bottleneck , all efforts were directed towards resolving that blockade . We first had to minimize breakdowns . Through better maintenance , we reduced the drier downtime and increased capacity to 300 tons . The drier was also running for only 5 days because it was aligned to the days the maize mill was operational . It ’ s normal to plan and organize resources around the main unit in a process rather than the bottleneck . We changed that . The drier started operating for 7 days and maize mill operations were aligned to the drier ’ s full capacity and production .
Bottlenecks can also be completely eliminated . In the maize mill example , we had plans to change the drier to a much bigger one with monthly capacity exceeding 6,000 tons . That is a machine bottleneck . If a bottleneck is caused by a staff , different questions are asked . Do the staff have adequate or relevant skills and experiences to do the job ? Are they provided with adequate and appropriate tools ? Is the work
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