#delivery #optimization #efficiency #utilization #control

idea

Companies tend to maximize their workers' utilization, which is detrimental to both customer experience^[1] and is actually not optimal^[2] since maximized utilization is not allowing for slack to process variability ; notwithstanding the human aspect of it.

references

• [1]: Tim Bray / Just too efficient is talking about the negative aspects of utilization maximization as a customer.
• [2]: Principles of product development flow

  Once again, it is the failure to correctly quantify economics. Although efficiency does have economic impact, it is only another proxy variable. We must make decisions based on overall economics. Since high capacity utilization simultaneously raises efficiency and increases delay cost, we need to look at the combined impact of these two factors. We can only do so if we express both factors in the same unit of measure, life-cycle profits. If we do this, we will always conclude that operating a product development process near full utilization is an economic disaster.

  ~ Reinertsen, Donald G. The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Product Development (p. 7). Celeritas Publishing. Kindle Edition.

links