« Pipeline Workshops™: RB Builders: Lessons from the Pipeline©
Pipeline Workshops™: Come. Participate. Learn. »
Pipeline workshops™ are size-limited, intense, interactive, comprehensive immersions into the principles and disciplines of homebuilding production.
In recent workshops, we have added the RB Builders: Lessons from the Pipeline© business case study and a robust set of problem-solving exercises built around the velocity accelerators, but most attendees and observers would still agree that the most compelling part of the Pipeline workshop™ is the Pipeline game™: teams of geographically-diverse builders that are required to go through a progression of scenarios that is both a simulation of home building production and a business game.
It is the same Pipeline game™ we have use at Housing Leadership Summits, at CertainTeed Builder Advisory Groups, and Builder Technology Summits.
The objective of the Pipeline game™ is to reinforce the production principles taught in the Pipeline workshop™, including: (1) the effect of variation on a production system, (2) pull scheduling according to the capacity of a constrained resource, and (3) the importance of connecting decisions made on operating matters (like flow, capacity, duration, and work-in-process) to the critical business outcomes of profitability and return on assets.
With multiple teams playing every game with exactly the same rules and understanding, the results never lie.
Look at the results from a recent workshop. In every category – from throughput (closings), to work-in-process levels, to inventory turns, to cycle time, to net income, to return on assets – the teams made remarkable progress, often exceeding expectations.
You have to play the Pipeline game™, see the measures, and calculate the results for yourself, in order to fully understand what the axis values mean; instead, focus on the performance trends (y-axis), as the games in this workshop progressed (x-axis).
This was Revenue . . .
This was inventory turn . . .
This was cycle time, expressed in days . . .
This was Net Income Margin . . .
This was Return on Assets, a reflection of its co-equal components: Net Income Margin (margin) and inventory turn (velocity) . . .
After the initial shock of shattered instincts, every metric was in precisely the direction you would would want, the exact direction you would expect, if the production principles are true and if real progress is being made.
Clearly, the builders attending this Pipeline workshop™ learned from their participation. They learned the principles and disciplines of homebuilding production.
Pipeline games™ teach builders to “see” production; they simulate the fast-paced, rapidly-changing, uncertain, risk-laden, variation-filled environment in which homebuilding production decisions must be made. It is learning based on experience and action, not words. They compress the learning curve, presenting production situations that are simple, fast, easy to see and understand, that can be modified and rerun, until the principles are understood.
“Change is a necessary condition to any improvement effort, but change is difficult, disruptive, time-consuming, and costly; the effort can fail to produce the result. Learning needs to occur without so much cost, disruption, and risk. Managing production and improving operating and financial performance becomes intuitive and simple, but there is much to understand. It is counter to what is taught, therefore, difficult to grasp; it must be learned, and that is harsh when it occurs at the cost of real operating performance and actual business outcomes.”
The next Pipeline workshop™ is at the Ponte Vedra Inn and Club, Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, on October 26-27, 2016. Cost is $850.00.
Sponsored by BUILDER and Constellation HomeBuilder Systems.