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Planning Versus Expediting - August 2023

The Ford Files - August 2023
“Planning Versus Expediting”

Dear Readers, the August edition of “The Ford Files” takes on a conundrum most of us face in both our professional and personal lives: we’re too busy fighting fires to focus on fire prevention! We rush to get work done at the office, knowing we’ll still be checking emails and text throughout the evening. Scramble through traffic, picking up kids from band practice, meeting our significant other for dinner, or rushing to get to the bowling alley for league play. Hopefully enjoying some leisure time while trying to get to bed as early as possible, realizing the cycle begins anew at dawn, or even before sunrise.

I often start supply chain courses by posing a question to the class: what percentage of time do you spend planning v. expediting? Is it 90%-10%, 50%-50%, other? The more common responses among thousands of students over the years suggest that most of us are only planning 10-30% of the time, and for the most part we are constantly chasing our tails, trying to push the “hot order” out the door. (Sidebar question: how does one measure the priority of a “hot order?” Is someone running around the shop floor with a thermometer checking their status?) I might humbly suggest that if we spend most of today or this week expediting, then we have guaranteed that’s what we’ll be doing tomorrow, next week, next month, etc. Expediting is terribly inefficient, and costs us the lost opportunity we could have been planning.

Part of the problem is a management mindset that mistakenly believes expediting is a good thing: it looks like people are busy. Friends, busy does not equal productive. I recall a manager with this mindset, who thought expediting reduces lead time (LT). Imagine Ford being bold enough to correct his boss, stating that expediting does nothing to reduce planned lead time, rather it reflects an instance of expending extra effort to beat the planned lead time. Case in point: let us assume a product has a standard three-week cumulative lead time, based on supplier’s response to purchase orders and our own internal manufacturing and assembly LT’s, plus pick-pack-ship to customer. Perhaps we pay for overnight express on inbound and outbound shipments, work overtime and weekends, risk cutting corners that sacrifice quality, somehow manage to get an order processed in two weeks. That does not change the fact that the planned LT is still three weeks! I might dare suggest that expediting actually inhibits our ability to engage in continuous improvement efforts that would reduce the planned LT.

From APICS CPIM Glossary:
Lead time – “a span of time required to perform a process (or series of operations)”
Expedite – “To rush or chase production or purchase orders that are needed in less than the normal lead time”

I have had a heckuva challenge explaining this to students as well as consulting clients. One class had several students who worked at an electronics company that specializes in power supply equipment, and explained it was the nature of their business to always expedite. Their products were in high demand after power failures, such as occur during severe seasonal storms. I tried to clarify that this should not be expediting: their normal and expected lead times should be short to being with. They should have an operating environment designed to support quick turnaround. Fast food restaurants with drive-through service provide an apt analogy. The normal wait between placing an order and pick up at the window should be two minutes. That is NOT expediting, that is the normal lead time. Most of the food is either deep-fried or microwaved, shortening the cooking cycle. Fast food restaurants have efficient layouts in place, they represent examples of lean flow.

I appreciate there will always be times when Murphy drops by causing disruptions, and I am a pragmatist at heart. There will always be a place for expediting. My suggestion of an appropriate balance of workload is perhaps 90% planning and 10% expediting. Let us also recognize the role of the top-down planning hierarchy. I trust senior executives looking five to ten years into the future are nearly 100% planners. Similarly, I accept that blue collar workers in our factories and warehouses are more focused on cranking product out the door to meet customer service objectives. I’ll close with an expression most of us are familiar with: failing to plan is planning to fail.

Yours in ASCM,

Ford

Ford is here to help. If you have any follow up questions or comments, or if you or your company are facing any unresolved challenges, feel free to drop me a note at [email protected]