People are imperfect. We all know that. How can we turn this imperfection into perfection? Prepare for a thought-provoking blog.
People are imperfect. We all know that. How can we turn this imperfection into perfection? Prepare for a thought-provoking blog.
I admit it: my wife packs my suitcase. She doesn’t really trust my “packing accuracy,” and packing is a profession that requires a professional. She always puts one day of clothing in my hand luggage; the rest is in my larger suitcase. (This strategy proved itself during a recent flight; all larger suitcases stayed at Schiphol due to the storm Eunice). After my journey, everything is used. Isn’t that great?
So, I should be thankful, which I often am. Rarely – I mean very rarely – she forgets something, or something gets broken during the flight. Then I am not happy. To make it worse, that unhappiness leads to paranoid behaviour. Prior to the next flight, I check everything that went wrong. Also, I ask to buy some extra stuff. It’s annoying and irrational. I can get so focused on what went wrong that I lose sight of what is needed. A recent example was a forgotten health questionnaire. I lost 30 minutes after a flight that was already 2 hours late ☹.
Now picture yourself as a maintenance engineer. You were called to duty because of a machine failure. You knew exactly what to do and had the right people to fix the problem. There were just no parts available. Result: complete downtime of a production line. Suppose your rationalism is 50% better than mine, then still you want the availability of the missing parts guaranteed until eternity.
Picture the same scenario for a buyer. Deliveries from a particular supplier were always predictable. So, for planned maintenance, stocking was not needed. However, the recent delivery was problematic. The lead time was 100 days instead of 20 days. He slept badly at night and tried different suppliers, but nothing worked. So, he came up with a robust solution: let’s stock a lot of these parts.
When reviewing past planning decisions, we find numerous instances of these irrational actions. Legitimation from data is often absent, and alternatives have not been considered. But the decisions are extremely logical because…we make them as humans. Then we include passion, emotion, power play, bias, and a lot of other – not too constructive – behavioural elements.
Some people think and advocate that software is a luxury product. ERP systems can do the job; you just need to find your way in using the ERP systems the right way. I can only say: bounded rationality applies here as well. It might be the case that such a person just doesn’t have a clue what spare parts management is about.
People are beautiful creatures, but they have strong limitations when it comes to spare parts management. I provided three recommendations to cope with human imperfections.
If you’ve made it to this part of the blog, you might ask if my wife and I are still a happy couple. Of course! I compensate for my annoying behaviour with an infinite number of relational talents…. Bounded rationality applies always and everywhere.
Would you like to contact us or know more about our solutions and author? Please use the links below.
Jan Willem Rustenburg
