Ron Crabtree speaks with supply chain professional Philip Godden about finding the real system constraint before investing in automation. Philip explains how to model capacity across an operation, verify a bottleneck with data and direct observation, stabilize the process, and add flexible capacity without overbuilding. They also discuss peak demand, autonomous mobile robots, staging, robots as a service, and why solving the wrong problem can move work faster without improving total throughput.
Automating the Constraint: How to Know Where Automation Will Improve Throughput
Ron Crabtree speaks with supply chain professional Philip Godden about finding the real system constraint before investing in automation. Philip explains how to model capacity across an operation, verify a bottleneck with data and direct observation, stabilize the process, and add flexible capacity without overbuilding. They also discuss peak demand, autonomous mobile robots, staging, robots as a service, and why solving the wrong problem can move work faster without improving total throughput.