Momentum and Inertia

The recent NCAA basketball tournament caused me think about the value of momentum and its relationship to manufacturing and distribution operations.

Clearly, in sports, we think of momentum in a positive way. For example, ”We’ve got momentum going into this game.” Without that momentum, no team will make it all the way to the finals.

Similarly, we have momentum in our operations. It enables us to come in to work each day and not have to start planning from scratch. We have demand. We have materials and products flowing into the facility. And we will use the same processes today that we did yesterday. Momentum will carry us through.

Absent outside influences, our momentum becomes strong inertia. That is, we will continue to travel in the same direction at the same pace. It’s a comfortable place to be – until someone comes along to challenge us. Then, it’s necessary to change our course.

Too much inertia may make changing how we do things difficult to accomplish. We hear things like, “But, we’ve always done it that way,” or “We tried that once, and it didn’t work.”

Too little momentum, and it’s difficult to change direction. In a project meeting recently, one of the team members observed that, “It’s hard to steer a sailboat if there is no wind.”

So, then I wondered, can we have an environment where there is momentum for change itself. One in which we come in each day with the confidence that our inertia will assure today’s success, but with an expectation that we will find something to change to make the operation better tomorrow.

I was once exposed to a theory of improvement that advocated making a small change, almost any change, in the operation. If the results from making the change were positive, then we should continue the change at a slightly stronger level. If the results were negative, we could revert to the former operation and try a different small change. My recollection is that it was called “perturbation theory,” based on the small challenges to the status quo.

With such an adventuresome attitude, significant positive changes are bound to surface over the course of time.

One might start by combining two operations in a process sequence, or by changing a batch size. Neither would threaten today’s success, but might point toward a worthwhile operations improvement.

Our ultimate goal can be set high. The old comparison of value-added vs. non-value-added time tells us that. How many hours are spent in a warehouse just getting product ready to pick? In many cases, it’s one hour of support for each hour of picking. What is yours?

Continuous improvement is critical to your company’s success. Every day we read about those who rested on their laurels and slowly slipped into obscurity, or were taken over by a more aggressive competitor.

When a team is losing momentum, expectations diminish. When they are gaining momentum, we expect them to win!

Do you have the right balance between inertia and momentum for change in your operation?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

James M. Apple, Jr. is a Director in The Progress Group. Prior to co-founding The Progress Group in 1991, he was a Partner with Coopers & Lybrand's SysteCon division. During 1992-1995 he served as a Senior Systems Advisor with Vanderlande Industries, a major conveyor and systems provider in Europe.

Jim is an internationally recognized thought leader in the area of facility design and integrated distribution systems. His contributions to the improvement of distribution practices have been recognized by his receipt of the prestigious Reed-Apple Award, which is given for lifetime contributions to the advancement of the material handling profession. Jim has also received the Institute of Industrial Engineers' Facilities Planning and Design Award. He has written numerous articles and handbook chapters on warehousing and logistics operations and is a popular speaker on logistics seminar and conference programs.

Prior to SysteCon, Jim worked as an Industrial Engineer with IBM, was Supervisor of Facilities Planning for the Oldsmobile Division of General Motors and was Executive Vice President for an automotive aftermarket parts supplier. He holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in Industrial and Systems Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology.