Work in process limits (Concept)

Description

Prioritize work, limit the amount of things that people are working on, and focus on getting a small number of high-priority tasks done.

Tags

process, capability

Documentation

When faced with too much work and too few people to do it, rookie managers assign people to work on multiple tasks in the hope of increasing throughput. Unfortunately, the result is that tasks take longer to get done, and the team burns out in the process.

Instead, you should do the following:

  * Prioritize work
  * Limit how much people work on
  * Focus on completing a small number of high-priority tasks

The manufacturing sector has a long history of limiting the amount of work in process (WIP). Factories don’t hold large amounts of inventory. Instead, when a customer orders a product, parts are made in-house, on-demand or are pulled from suppliers upstream as needed, and the company then assembles the product just in time. When you implement this process correctly, you end up with shorter lead times, higher quality, lower costs, and less waste.

Other Relations

From	Name	To	Description
Work in process limits	enables	Fast Flow

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