Continuous Improvement in an
Omni-speed IT estate needs IT Operation
Managers to re-look at what can be done different, effectively. IT Operations has
borrowed time tested methodologies from manufacturing operations, and adapted them.
In this article we will focus into the science behind bottleneck and constraint
relates to IT Operations.
Imagine an operation of filling a bucket of water. You go to
the tap, and It takes 5 minutes of continuous flow to fills it. If there is
dirt in the tap filter, blocking the rate of flow, you would need more time to
fill the same bucket. If you go to a tank and put the bucket in and pull out a
bucket full of water, the same task could be done in seconds. What does it tell
you?
Let’s dig in deeper in the same scenario.
Scenario 1: Your task is to fill water in a bucket. When you
go to the tap, the tap has a limitation of how much water it can flow and thus
it needs 5 minutes to fill a bucket. That is its constraint. If we need to fill
the bucket in a second, we go to the tank. We could achieve that by alleviating
the constraint, skipping the tap and going to the tank. You have a choice, but
you cannot change the constraint.
Scenario 2: Your task is to fill the bucket and you go to
the tap. Due to dirt in the filter, the bucket fills slowly and needs more time
than the usual 5 minutes to fill. This delay is a bottleneck, holding up all
the other subsequent task. To still be able to meet the time, one has to clean
the dirt stuck in the filter and regain the desired flow of water. We could achieve
this by taking the action to remove the cause of the bottleneck. You have
control over the backlog.
This analogy can be applied to a day to day operations, in
IT or Manufacturing, to explain why some process builds inertia and become
inefficient.
The bottleneck theory helps to identify problems and create
solutions for streamlined operations. Do note, when a process outpaces even by
a single step in the overall processing, it causes bottleneck. This is
generally a supply and capacity driven problem. Just like in manufacturing, IT
also would need continuous monitoring to look out for backlog accumulation causing
bottleneck.
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| The Theory Of Constraint |
One general tendency is to increase capacity to address
bottleneck. This would soon create a situation of surplus if not calibrated for
the right speed. Speed for an IT process would not be constant, and thus for an
Omni-speed IT operation, we will need to design for the flexibility in service.
Where you as an operations manager get to increase or reduce services on
demand.
How does a working process gather inertia? To answer this
let us look at the Supply. Say you have process to service requests. The
process may have multiple process handles that could be manual intervention,
autonomous handling, workflow etc. Imagine, due to an event, we have increased
numbers of requests, say a project go live. One of the situation could be that
the existing process handlers are stretched. Another scenario
could be that within the capacity to serve was reduced, say due to a natural
calamity causing outages. This will add constraints to serve. In both cases we
will see accumulation at the slowest process handler in the IT operations. This
will result in process gaining inertia and not perform to its design. Changing
constraints over time adds to inertia.
Some easy quick fixes could be to identify the bottleneck
and adding additional capacity to process handle. This may elevate the current
bottleneck, but can introduce newer ones. This is where we need to do a flow
time analysis of a process. Flow time is defined as the amount of time a flow
unit spends in a business process from beginning to end, also known as the
total processing time. If there is more than one path through the process, the
flow time is equivalent to the length of the longest path. But flow rate is an
average rate, and not the peak rate. It will help baseline your existing
process design, when you work on its improvement.
How do Theory of Constraint help re look at an IT process and
help its redesign? This is a methodology for identifying the most important
limiting factor (i.e. constraint) that stands in the way of achieving a goal
and then systematically improving that constraint until it is no longer the
limiting factor. There is a continuous cycle involving the five steps.
- Step 1: Identify the
constraints in a process. At this stage you identify the goal, desired
throughput, look out for cause, identify your inventory of tools and process.
- Step 2: Decide how to
exploit the systems constraints. Identify the methods to be used and decide how
we maximize the throughput. The method should be evaluated to meet the goal of
the improvement.
- Step 3: Subordinate
everything else to the decisions of Step 2. Bring focus of all available
resources, tools and processes on remediation of the constraint.
- Step 4: Elevate the
system's constraints. Here bring in the changes, investments and process
improvement. At this stage a decision to invest by management is taken on better
tools, resource training, revamped process etc,.
- Step 5: Evaluate and
if the current constraint is broken, go to step 1. Study whether solving the
current constraints created other constraints. Do not allow inertia to set in.
The process has to be monitored carefully as to whether other constraints now
exist and to monitor the progress of the old constraint.
How do we identify constraints and bottleneck in operations? Constraint specifically refers to a factor outside of the operation manager's
control. A machine working at full capacity represents a manufacturing
constraint and similarly a process handle working in full capacity is its
constraint. Even an employee shortage can be a constraint. Bottleneck, on the
other hand, is used in operations to refer to something that is temporary in
nature. With a few smart adjustments, bottlenecks can be eliminated. And if
they cannot be eliminated, they are actually constraints.
The approach to evaluate an
IT process optimization will
need a study into the details using
Theory of Constraints to identify
constraints,
Study Bottleneck to identify accumulations,
Flow Time Analysis to
determine optimal paths,
time & motion study to study process handle to
seek more efficient methods of execution and then run
simulations. Running
successful simulations runs are necessary as any problem alleviation in a
certain process handle do not assure that a new problem will not appear elsewhere.
Thus when we do simulations, we should be able to not only address current
problems, but also identify and fix potential problems.
