Delays

DELAYS: WHEN THINGS HAPPEN … EVENTUALLY

As we’ve seen, systems seem to have minds of their own. Nowhere is this more evident than in delays—interruptions between your actions and their consequences. Delays can make you badly overshoot your mark, or they can have a positive effect if you recognize them and work with them.

In a classic article in the Sloan Management Review, Ray Stata, former CEO of Analog Devices and founder of the Massachusetts High Technology Council, wrote that “One of the highest leverage points for improving system performance, is the minimization of system delays.” Stata was referring to an increasing awareness in the late 1980s among American manufacturers that their traditional focus on tight control of inventories in warehouses was inherently lower leverage than their Japanese counterparts’ approach to reducing delays, so that over- and understocking don’t occur in the first place. This gradually gave rise to the idea of “time based competition”: “The way leading companies manage time,” says George Stalk, vice president of the Boston Consulting Group, “—in production, in new product development, in sales and distribution—represents the most powerful new source of competitive disadvantage.” In turn, appreciating how important it was to reduce delays evolved into a cornerstone of “flexible manufacturing” and today’s “lean manufacturing.” [11]

Delays between actions and consequences are everywhere in human systems. We invest now to reap a benefit in the distant future; we hire a person today but it may be months before he or she is fully productive; we commit resources to a new project knowing that it will be years before it will pay off. But delays are often unappreciated and lead to instability. For example, the decision makers in the beer game consistently misjudged the delays that kept them from getting orders filled when they thought they would.

Delays, when the effect of one variable on another takes time, constitute the third basic building block for a systems language. Virtually all feedback processes have some form of delay. But often the delays are either unrecognized or not well understood. This can result in “overshoot,” going further than needed to achieve a desired result. The delay between eating and feeling full has been the nemesis of many a happy diner; we don’t yet feel full when we should stop eating, so we keep going until we are overstuffed. The delay between starting a new construction project and its completion results in overbuilding real estate markets and an eventual shakeout. In the beer game, the delay between placing and receiving orders for beer regularly results in overordering.

Unrecognized delays can also lead to instability and breakdown, especially when they are long. Adjusting the shower temperature, for instance, is far more difficult when there is a ten-second delay before the water temperature adjusts, than when the delay takes only a second or two.