ABSTRACT
There are only three basic ingredients to the concept of balance: people, time, and work. Balancing the system is important because, in any given process or value stream, some process steps take longer than others. Achieving balance through the coordination of time requires having a standard work schedule. Striving for balance causes us to focus on designing the value stream for flexibility, rather than wishing people or technology were better than they are. Like walking a tightrope, balance is a dynamic state of constant adjustment. Finding the optimal way to balance work in a value stream involves experimenting with different combinations of people, time, and units of work. In practice, of course, achieving balance through the redistribution of work can be just as hard to achieve as redistributing people or time. Dividing up the work into smaller bits and then redistributing it implies people have the skills to do the work.
