Sunday, January 13, 2013

Resistance to Planning


Fig 1: Poor Planning



Fig 2: Better Planning
For both the case of poor planning and better planning the project is finished in the same time frame. With poor planning construction, getting the real world system, starts earlier and chaos is carried through into construction. The result is construction comes to a halt as the chaos throws an unexpected obstruction in the way, and everyone gets stressed out.

With better planning, the chaos in the system is dealt with during the planning stages, and order is attempted to be created for the construction stage. Doing this however delays getting started on construction, and getting the real world system delivered. No one sees anything on the ground, and people are not happy, and otherwise get stressed out.

The result, since only looking at time, activity and events, the general preference is to rush ahead with minimal planning. What is not shown is that it is considerably more expensive to have the delay occur during construction, than to have  a longer delay upfront caused by engaging in better planning. The objective should be to have construction, fabrication and manufacturing to run as smoothly as possible. To have all the chaos occur during the low cost operation of planning and design. Of course if planning and design becomes extortionate, then once again, everyone speeds ahead with construction.