Teach Your Shop Floor
the P.O.L.C.A.

Paired Overlapping Cards with Authorization, P.O.L.C.A.
is all about Time Based Thinking. How long does it take to get a customer’s order through the process and delivered. P.O.L.C.A.’s focus on Time Based Thinking forces organizations to concentrate on what really matters to the customer. Namely, how long is it going to take to get my order?

A recent article in APICS Magazine (July/August 2011) describes Dell Computers’ move away from “Mass Customization” in response to the evolving personal computer market. Research indicates just the opposite is happening for Job Shop/Process industry organizations:

” In the 21st century there will be increasing demand for low-volume, high-variety products with options configured for individual customers or even custom-engineered for each client”
(It’s About Time, Suri, 2010).

This research indicates a period of growth for the Job Shop/Process industry which already supports customer requirements for low volume, high variety products.

In this manufacturing environment we have functions (cutting, grinding, painting, assembling, etc.) grouped into work centers. A customer’s job only moves through the work centers needed to complete that unique item. This flow of jobs between work centers can be, and usually is different for each job that is run through the shop. It is this low-volume/custom product flow through random work centers that P.O.L.C.A. is designed to control and accelerate.

A characteristic of the Job Shop/Process industry is that the largest portion of a job’s actual lead time is consumed by the job waiting in the queue at the work center prior to work on the job beginning. When we talk about lead time reduction in job shops, we tend to focus on finding ways to “make the job run faster”. While it is important to continue finding ways to reduce actual touch time (when the job is actually being worked on), more bang for the buck can be achieved by dramatically reducing the queue time of not just a few “Hot Jobs”, but reducing the queue time of “every job” going through the shop floor.

P.O.L.C.A.’s strategy for reducing this order lead time is straight forward. I can’t start working on a job in Work center A if the next downstream work center, B, doesn’t currently have the capacity available to work on my job as soon as it gets to that work center. This linkage of the upstream/downstream work centers is the heart of the P.O.L.C.A. lead time reduction process.

While manufacturing’s focus for P.O.L.C.A. is on lead time reduction through the production floor, the P.O.L.C.A. concept is applicable for all areas of an organization that touch a customer order.

P.O.L.C.A. isn’t a new management process that makes other techniques such as Total Quality Management, Six Sigma, Kaizen, etc. obsolete. These techniques actually concentrate on resolving other aspects of the same issue, specifically, identifying and eliminating anything that causes waste. Waste in this context is defined as any activity that does not add value from the “customer’s perspective.” P.O.L.C.A. is the next logical step in this continuing process of elimination of waste in the Job Shop/Process industry.