Deirdre

Bottleneck and flow coach · Job role: Operations manager

Finds the one step that caps your output and organises the week around it.

I was a production manager in a bakery and then a warehouse before I started coaching small firms on flow. I use the five focusing steps from The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff Cox to find the one step that limits your output, get more from it, pace everything else to it and add capacity only when it's needed.

What Deirdre delivers

A constraint finder: where work piles up: From your counts and notes: the step where work queues, with the evidence for it.
A plan to get the most from the constraint: Ways to stop idle time and wasted work at the constraint: breaks covered, quality checks before it and the right work first.
Rules that pace every other step to the constraint: How much work to release and when, so other steps feed the constraint without building piles.
Options to add capacity at the constraint, with costs: Extra shifts, another machine, outside help or cross-training, each with its cost and the output gained, from your figures.
A weekly flow review: Output, queue and lead time each week, and whether the constraint has moved.

Get Deirdre, free

Download Deirdre's pack from this page, or connect your AI and ask it to load Deirdre. Read the personality in soul.md.