Some time ago, I served as an Emergency Response Team (ERT) leader at a semiconductor facility in the US. I was charged with coordinating safe and effective responses to emergency situations. My team faced a range of issues – from personal injuries to gas leak detections to spills of gaseous and liquified chemicals with multi-syllabic names. At the onset of any emergency, we had three tasks to complete within the first few minutes of the call:
One response often went unstated but was always on the table: “Do nothing.” It’s a very counter-intuitive response, especially when risks to equipment, environment, and personnel exist. But sometimes, doing nothing is the right response.
I’ve recently considered this question in terms of the manufacturing process. How can it be possible for even the most senior floor operators to know, with confidence, exactly what lot to run given the hundreds of seen and unseen variables that exist in a manufacturing facility at any minute? And how can doing nothing when choosing lots to process actually be a benefit?
Materials that queue in front of equipment likely have specific and unique demands. One might be marked as “hot.” Another may contain a scheduled due date that results in a favorable (or unfavorable) critical ratio. Still, another may represent a product that, if shipped by this weekend, will bring in huge amounts of present and future revenue. Faced with these complex and often competing priorities, it’s not hard to imagine a floor operator facing a type of emergency when determining what to run next, especially when a process run on a given piece of equipment could take 24 hours or more to complete. That’s a lot of time to commit a tool to a process! The natural, human response at these points of decision is to pick anything and process the material so that “something is running”...a response that can result in unintended impacts to upstream and/or downstream throughput or utilization, missed due dates, bottlenecks...the adverse effects are too numerous to name.
To be clear, there are situations where “just process whatever is there” is the correct response. But have you considered not processing the material in support of a greater goal, metric, or outcome?
Here are a few situations where “doing nothing” may be the best response:
Doing nothing forces both human and automated systems to work cooperatively toward decisions that incorporate lot context, equipment state, downstream demands, and a host of other states and statuses. Doing nothing may help improve specific KPIs such as optimization and equipment utilization. Doing nothing provides room for those last-minute changes that occur before the material is formally committed to the equipment.
When you think about it, we face decisions all the time where the most reflexive response is often the worst response – when in fact the counter-intuitive response is the best.
Here are a few examples:
The decision to “do nothing” can be a profound strategy in both emergencies and manufacturing processes, yet it requires careful consideration and analysis. This is where the significance of scheduling and dispatching becomes evident. By integrating these automated systems, we can more effectively harness the power of inaction. These systems not only guide the operator towards the most efficient and effective decisions by analyzing a multitude of variables but also empower them to recognize when inaction is the most beneficial course. Embracing automated scheduling and dispatching enables a data-driven approach to decision-making, ensuring that each choice is made with the utmost clarity and insight – and instilling confidence when that choice is strategic inaction.