Test cells overloaded, deadlines missed, parts absent.
Chasing full utilisation, losing the schedule.
The R&D department of a global truck manufacturer - around a thousand people, building some 70,000 trucks a year - kept missing deadlines in its durability testing. Test equipment was a bottleneck, projects were overloaded, and long checklists slowed everything down.
Test-cell use was uneven, parts were missing from tests that had been scheduled because design teams held unaligned deadlines, and teams were chasing project goals that had become largely fictional.
A visual board on a two-week tact.
SAM ran interviews and a demand-driven flow analysis, and found the cause where it was least expected: over-scheduling the test cells in pursuit of full utilisation was itself creating the planning problem.
In its place came a visual planning board on a two-week tact, with test carriers moving through it as cards advancing toward the cells - so the real state of the work was visible to everyone at once.
Siloed work became shared objectives.
The design department became more productive - a competitive advantage in itself - with better use of the test cells and test carriers launched on time. Work that had been siloed turned into shared objectives, and a sense of calm and control replaced the overload.
The way of planning was taken up more widely across the R&D department, beyond the group it started with.
