Educating the Color Blind

[James Robert Crow <jr1crow@mindspring.com>]

I decided to break this up into several posts istead of a really long one.

You can demonstrate flow with a die that is one of a pair of dice and a bag
of M&M's.

Lead a brief discussion on the need for a smooth flow in the production
process and the potential benefits to be gained.

Begin by defining the group as a production process with each person
representing a stage in the process.  Next open the bag and give six M&M's
to the first person in the process.  Ask that person to roll the die and
pass only the number of M&M's that came up on the die to the next person.
Repeat this process for the next six people in the production process.

Repeat this entire process six times.  What you will get is that some
people in the process will fairly consistently roll either high or low
numbers.  This represents production capacity.  You will see bottlenecks
develop as M&M's pile up at some stations while other stations have excess
capacity.  

You can then discuss this as an interruption of the flow and how can a
company develop methods of determining flow and then determining
constraints and how to remove them.

This also demonstrates how work moves horizontally through an organization
and the importance of cooperation of all people involved in a process to
achieve a smooth flow.


Robert Crow
Principal
Crow Consulting
165 River North Circle NW
Atlanta, GA 30328 USA
Voice 770-396-2280
FAX 770-396-7010
jr1crow@mindspring.com
www.crowgroup.net