When I worked in manufacturing, we worked tirelessly to reduce job changeover time.
Like a Nascar pit crew--the analogy productivity consultants always used--we hunted for 10 seconds here, 20 seconds there...incremental improvements that would hopefully add up to meaningful gains.
Then, one day an operator said, "Instead of trying to find ways to shave off a minute...what if we pretend we can't shut down at all between jobs, and work from there?"
That simple perspective shift completely changed our approach to solving the problem--and while we never got to zero, we got really close, really fast.
