21st International Conference of the

TOC Practitioners Alliance - TOCPA

www.tocpractice.com

11 November 2015, UK

Using diagonal buffer

for better managerial decisions
in production and operations
Jelena Fedurko,
TOC Strategic Solutions, Estonia
11 November, 2015

Jelena Fedurko
Jelena Fedurko is a Co-Founder and Co-President of
TOC Practitioners Alliance TOCPA, International
Director of TOC Strategic Solutions, TOC expert in
tocExpert.
Jelena has been involved in TOC since 1999. She is a
TOC expert, trainer and consultant, and provides
TOC implementation support in production, supply
chain and project management. Jelena has worked
in various countries all over the world, including
Japan, Poland, Germany, Switzerland, Turkey, Italy,
Russia, Ukraine, India, China, Chile, Colombia,
Mexico.
Jelena is the author of the books Behind the Cloud,
Through Clouds to Solutions, Typical mistakes in
working with TOC Logical Tools. Together with Oded
Cohen Jelena has co-authored the book Theory of
jelenafedurko.gs@gmail.com
Constraints Fundamentals. She has contributed to a
www.tocexperet.com
number of books on TOC, and has many
publications. Jelena is the translator and editor of www.toc-strategicsolutions.com
many books on TOC.

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The regular (horizontal)

Production Buffer for SDBR
The REGULAR PRODUCTION BUFFER for planning and execution control
is measured only in time
its size is preset
for it to work properly the size of the Red zone should be NOT LESS than the cumulative
TOUCH TIME needed to process the work order
it serves 3 objectives on different stages of handling a customer order:
(1)
(2)

to check and determine what completion date can be promised to the client (SALES and
PRODUCTION PLANNING)
to determine the work order (WO) release date (PRODUCTION PLANNING)

(3) to give production management early warning signals about the risk that a WO may be
not completed on time and to prompt for corrective actions (EXECUTION CONTROL)
it collects statistics for POOGI
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21st International Conference of the

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21st International Conference of the

TOC Practitioners Alliance - TOCPA

Why Diagonal Buffer for

Production (1)
There are certain conditions in the reality of production environment that can
pose questions whether the use of the Time Buffer would be effective or at
all possible:
(1) the touch time is a significant part of the elapsed time that the work
order spends in production often the touch time (including different kinds
of maturing time like cooling when no machine time is used) is close to 2/3
of the current PLT, thus
the requirement of setting the size of the Red to be not less than the
touch time immediately causes the planned PLT to increase which
does not bring enthusiasm to PPC people and often is truly not
needed
if there is no progress (or not enough progress) on the WO in the
Green zone, the loss of time can not be recovered later in the process
due to a very long touch time

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21st International Conference of the

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Why Diagonal Buffer for

Production (2)
There are certain conditions in the reality of production
environment that can pose questions whether the use of the
Time Buffer would be effective or at all possible:
(2) the orders for the same SKU are sporadic in time and hugely
vary in quantities, thus
it makes no sense to hold a stock buffer for this SKU to
work in the replenishment mode (as there is no regularity of
consumption),
it is not possible to preset the production buffer size (as the
order size varies hugely and unpredictably)

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21st International Conference of the

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Why Diagonal Buffer for

Production (3)
There are certain conditions in the reality of production
environment that can pose questions whether the use of the
Time Buffer would be effective or at all possible:
(3) the production is very flexible with capacity, and can quickly
and significantly increase the capacity for any work order
through assigning additional molds, knitting machines, workers in
assembling operations, etc., thus
the PPC people argue that in their conditions it is not
practical to have preset buffer sizes

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21st International Conference of the

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Why Diagonal Buffer for

Production
The three issues in the reality of production environment that pose
questions whether the use of the Time Buffer would be effective or at all
possible:
(1) the touch time is a significant part of the elapsed time
(2) the orders for the same SKU are sporadic in time and hugely vary in
quantities
(3) the production is very flexible with capacity, and can quickly and
significantly increase the capacity for any work order
Out of these three issues, the most critical is issue (1):
the Red zone is not enough to do all the work on the WO
if there is no progress (or not enough progress) on the WO in the Green
zone, the loss of time can not be recovered later in the process due to a
very long touch time
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21st International Conference of the

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Why we suggest Diagonal Buffer

for some specific Production environments

the Red zone is not enough to do all the work on the WO

if there is no progress (or not enough progress) on the WO in the Green zone, the loss
of time can not be recovered later in the process due to a very long touch time

This brings the need to measure not only the CONSUMPTION OF TIME allowed for the
work order (how much time has already passed from the allowed release),
but also the PROGRESS OF THE WORK ORDER COMPLETION
in terms of its content.

We can measure the progress of the content in two ways:

IN UNITS: measuring the number of units completed as compared to the number
of units in the WO

IN REMAINING TIME: estimating the remaining duration in time until the

completion of the WO (the same as estimating the remaining completion of the
task in CCPM)

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21st International Conference of the

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Why we suggest Diagonal Buffer

for some specific Production environments

% of consumption
of PRESCRIBED elapsed time for this WO

History of two WOs day after day

140%

140%

BLACK ZONE

BLACK ZONE
120%

120%

100%

100%

80%

80%

60%

60%

40%

40%

20%

20%

0%

0%

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

0%

20%

% of WO content completion

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40%

60%

80%

100%

The illustration is taken from Natalia

Anisimova, Presentation at 14 TOCPA
Conference in Moscow, Nov 2014

21st International Conference of the

TOC Practitioners Alliance - TOCPA

Why we suggest Diagonal Buffer

for some specific Production environments

WO 1 is for 200 units and

was given 5 working days
(5 8-hr shifts) PLT Buffer
on the Time Axis with the
release date on 1 Apr.
1 April
By the end of 1 April 10
units were produced.
% of completion of WO
content = 5%
% of time consumption =
20%

% of consumption
of PRESCRIBED elapsed time for this WO

When we need to measure two dimensions for every work order:

140%

BLACK ZONE
120%

100%

80%

60%

40%

1 Apr
20%

0%
0%

5%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

% of WO content completion
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21st International Conference of the

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Why we suggest Diagonal Buffer

for some specific Production environments

2 April
By the end of 2 April
total 20 units were
produced.
% of completion of WO
content = 20/200=10%
% of time consumption =
2/5=40%

% of consumption
of PRESCRIBED elapsed time for this WO

When we need to measure two dimensions for every work order:

140%

BLACK ZONE
120%

100%

80%

60%

2 Apr
40%

1 Apr
20%

0%
0%

5%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

% of WO content completion
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21st International Conference of the

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Why we suggest Diagonal Buffer

for some specific Production environments

3 April
By the end of 3 April
total 100 units were
produced.
% of completion of WO
content = 100/200=50%
% of time consumption =
3/5=60%

% of consumption
of PRESCRIBED elapsed time for this WO

When we need to measure two dimensions for every work order:

140%

BLACK ZONE
120%

100%

80%

3 Apr

60%

2 Apr
40%

1 Apr
20%

0%
0%

5%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

% of WO content completion

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21st International Conference of the

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Why we suggest Diagonal Buffer

for some specific Production environments
4 April morning
By the start of the shift on the
morning of 4 April production
received information from
quality control that out of 100
produced units 40 were faulty
and had to be produced again.
UPDATED STATUS
4 Apr morning:
% of completion of WO
content = (100-40)/200=30%
% of time consumption = 60%.
The decision was made to do
overtime on 4 Apr.
By the end of the overtime
there were total 150 good
units produced.

% of consumption
of PRESCRIBED elapsed time for this WO

When we need to measure two dimensions for every work order:

140%

BLACK ZONE
120%

100%

4 Apr
morning

80%

60%

3 Apr

2 Apr
40%

1 Apr
20%

0%
0%

5%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

% of WO content completion

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21st International Conference of the

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Why we suggest Diagonal Buffer

for some specific Production environments

4 April after overtime

By the end of the overtime
on 4 April there were total
150 good units produced.
% of completion of WO
content = 150/200=75%
% of time consumption =
80%.

% of consumption
of PRESCRIBED elapsed time for this WO

When we need to measure two dimensions for every work order:

140%

BLACK ZONE
120%

4 Apr
after
overtime

100%

4 Apr
morning

80%

60%

3 Apr

2 Apr
40%

1 Apr
20%

0%
0%

20%

40%

60%

75%

80%

100%

% of WO content completion
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21st International Conference of the

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Why we suggest Diagonal Buffer

for some specific Production environments

5 April
By the end of 5 April all 200
units were produced and
accepted by quality control.
% of completion of WO
content = 200/200=100%
% of time consumption =
100%.

% of consumption
of PRESCRIBED elapsed time for this WO

When we need to measure two dimensions for every work order:

140%

BLACK ZONE
120%

4 Apr
after
overtime

100%

4 Apr
morning

80%

60%

5Apr

3 Apr

2 Apr
40%

1 Apr
20%

0%
0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

% of WO content completion

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21st International Conference of the

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Why we suggest Diagonal Buffer

for some specific Production environments

Lets look at another

scenario
4 April after overtime
By the end of the overtime
on 4 April ALL 200 good
units produced.
% of completion of WO
content = 200/200=100%
% of time consumption =
80%.

% of consumption
of PRESCRIBED elapsed time for this WO

When we need to measure two dimensions for every work order:

140%

BLACK ZONE
120%

4 Apr
after
overtime

100%

4 Apr
morning

80%

60%

3 Apr

2 Apr
40%

1 Apr
20%

0%
0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

% of WO content completion
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The whole picture

at one glance the
status of ALL OPEN
production work
orders on a certain
date.

% of consumption
of PRESCRIBED elapsed time for this WO

Why we suggest Diagonal Buffer

for some specific Production environments

% of WO content completion

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Getting better visibility

and control

% of consumption
of PRESCRIBED elapsed time for this WO

09.04.2015

13.04.2015

17.04.2015

% of WO content completion

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