I don’t think this is titled well—this is not a negative response to rational improvement, it’s a negative response to change, which impedes (maybe; sometimes resistance to change is illegible but correct) rational improvement.
The LW response to this situation is to recognize that others’ maps are part of your territory, in that they are things you can model, predict and react to. DC complaints seem like a fairly straightforward case—at some level, one of two things is true:
1) there exists a management level that cares about end-to-end TIOE, and they can help figure out whether the DCs complaint should be addressed at your end or theirs.
2) DCs are effectively external vendors/customers, and your optimization should include their preferences. If that means subsidizing shipments (paid for by your operational cost improvements), fine. If it means batching or transshipping in ways that seem odd to you, but the DC claims reduces their expense, also fine. This is an extension of Vaniver’s mention of Kaldor-Hicks—Ronald Coase ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coase_theorem ) showed that you can just pay their costs, if the change is overall more efficient.
2.5) in some organizations, you can go so far as to play DCs against each other: if you have more capacity than “your” DCs can consume, offer incentives or lower prices to other plants’ DCs.
Be prepared, in either of these, to learn that the DCs have a point—even if they can’t or won’t measure it, if your improvements cost them more than they save you, you haven’t really improved the system. If that’s the case, you’re in for an even more difficult optimization problem—you’ll likely need to find allies in one or more DCs to help them reduce the cost of smaller batch sizes. Without support of upper management, this may not be possible.
3) (only after exploring all other options) go ahead and get sold. Be super-efficient for a company that can better value from your operational style.
I don’t think this is titled well—this is not a negative response to rational improvement, it’s a negative response to change, which impedes (maybe; sometimes resistance to change is illegible but correct) rational improvement.
The LW response to this situation is to recognize that others’ maps are part of your territory, in that they are things you can model, predict and react to. DC complaints seem like a fairly straightforward case—at some level, one of two things is true:
1) there exists a management level that cares about end-to-end TIOE, and they can help figure out whether the DCs complaint should be addressed at your end or theirs.
2) DCs are effectively external vendors/customers, and your optimization should include their preferences. If that means subsidizing shipments (paid for by your operational cost improvements), fine. If it means batching or transshipping in ways that seem odd to you, but the DC claims reduces their expense, also fine. This is an extension of Vaniver’s mention of Kaldor-Hicks—Ronald Coase ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coase_theorem ) showed that you can just pay their costs, if the change is overall more efficient.
2.5) in some organizations, you can go so far as to play DCs against each other: if you have more capacity than “your” DCs can consume, offer incentives or lower prices to other plants’ DCs.
Be prepared, in either of these, to learn that the DCs have a point—even if they can’t or won’t measure it, if your improvements cost them more than they save you, you haven’t really improved the system. If that’s the case, you’re in for an even more difficult optimization problem—you’ll likely need to find allies in one or more DCs to help them reduce the cost of smaller batch sizes. Without support of upper management, this may not be possible.
3) (only after exploring all other options) go ahead and get sold. Be super-efficient for a company that can better value from your operational style.