Is Super7 Operations possible without TITO, you might wonder? (Or, “What’s a TITO?”)

In my book on Super7 Operations (Super7 Operation – the Next Step for Lean in Financial Services), I describe the development of Super7 Operations – Lean and Operational Management with small autonomous teams. One of the crucial things in Super7 Operations is that there is a daily goal for each small autonomous Super7 team – one that they can reach by working together, by helping each other. In the first departments where Super7 Operations has been introduced successfully, this goal was to work TITO: Today-In, Today Out. All customer requests that are received today are processed today -finished today, the customer shouldn’t have to wait.  The team’s common goal is: finish all customer requests that you receive today or at least those that you receive up to one hour before closing time. The fluctuation in ‘demand’ isn’t buffered with inventory, but is answered with sufficient flexibility in capacity.

Recently, Super7 Operations was introduced in several operational departments where the nature of the work made it impossible or extremely impractical to work TITO. Request that take more than one day to process, in one instance. In another, extreme peaks and lows, with almost all requests of one month coming in in one single batch (Naturally, batches are evil (to summarize one of the principles of Lean to the extreme).  But sometimes batches happen).

We have found that it is possible to work with other daily goals than TITO. This requires more sophisticated planning, for one, to translate the total demand into daily goals. Working with goals like TITO+5 doesn’t work, as we experienced. The team needs to have a clear goal for each day, which is higher when demand is high and lower when demand is low. Only then you get the commitment, improvement and cooperation that you expect from Super7 Operations.

If you’r interested in how this planning for daily goals works, please drop me a note below. I can give you more details, if you want. Or, you can join the discussion on www.super7ops.com