Thursday Seeds | Dependencies in the plan

You create a plan. The project is great! It’s going to work and then the wheels come off.

Delayed dependencies in your plan necessitate the need to do some extra planning. If you are trying to cut your lead time on a project, this is a good place to do some brainstorming.

Did your predictive model come true or no? 

Did the forecast delay things due to weather or a cycle in the production that was not for seen? Was there a forecast at all? Some forecasting is only as good as the data given and even with smart Ai, it might not be enough to rely very heavily on for planning.

Materials arrival for value add are late with no notice of such.

Do you have another vendor you can rely on? How about six? How much material can you store on site? Are there differences in the materials that will have to be accounted for?

Maybe it’s that the labor team double booked or are not on board . You start brainstorming ideas and you come up with three:

• Alternate Labor
• Incentive to this project first
• Add a new shift.

It could be that a system volume stress test failed more than three times with tweaks to the system each time. It’s then that you need to identify if the failure is software, hardware or some combination of both. This could mean escalated meetings that help arrive at solutions or adjustments for both.

All those vendors you’ve called on have delivered defective materials. The materials arrive late and of the wrong color. 

What’s your plan B? How do you work on your risk mitigation at this point in the project?

Which tasks can continue during your wait on other tasks? You make the reorder And you try an order from a new vendor. If one of these solutions doesn’t work, then maybe the other one will. What is your vendor’s return policy? Are you eating all of this product in lack of returns?

When the project is finished, the sigh of relief but also in a collection of data, the lessons learned can become the adjustments to keep this from happening in the next project. It could be that the next project becomes the process and this starts a business model for the future. 

Even in the headaches of what seem impossible in the midst of the project, solutions arrive at the strangest and most advantageous times. Remain open and keep working!