ABSTRACT
Digital technology is so promising because it can drastically accelerate the rate of task completion through automation. Speeding up Process 2 with automation has created an even bigger bottleneck in front of Process 3. In example, automating Process 3 would improve the customer-felt lead time to the next lowest production rate—namely that of Process 2, or 20 widgets/month, which is twice as good as before. The value stream remains unbalanced so long as Process 1 continues to produce at 30 widgets/month, but no more so than it was prior to automation. Without a sense of how technology can unbalance a value stream, companies will almost always suffer unintended negative consequences of implementing what could otherwise be very promising technology. Mistrustful of technology, the upstream teams all feared that there would be costly glitches, and were initially reluctant to allow the automation project to happen. Automating a process without considering the upstream inputs and downstream impacts often leads to disappointing results.
