Lean manufacturing is a core principle in modern operations.
But most companies don't start there.
In the beginning, batching feels smarter.
- Do one task.
- Finish it.
- Move everything to the next step.
It feels organized. It feels efficient.
Yesterday I was at a client and that's exactly how they were working.
One person was portioning everything. Another person was grabbing the portions from a bin and bringing them to packing.
Two people. Two tasks. Seems logical.
But then I noticed something.
There was another portioning system sitting idle.
They didn't have another person running it.
And from talking to the operations manager, those portioning stations are the real bottleneck of the facility.
So the question becomes:
Do we try to optimize the flow around one machine?
Or do we increase the output of two machines?
Sometimes the biggest gains in operations don't come from perfecting the process.
They come from adding capacity where the constraint lives.
Lesson:
Don't optimize the line around the bottleneck.
Increase the bottleneck.