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Advanced Critical Chain · Lesson 4 of 8

Full kit in depth

With fewer slots open, a stuck job costs more than ever. Prepare work while it waits in the queue, with a dedicated full-kit team, so that once it starts it never stops.

14 min · Not completed yet

With WIP control and sequential priority, work moves from the queue into the active zone only as something completes. Elapsed time drops and output rises. Look at the waiting queue now and ask: does it offer a further opportunity?

The nightmare of a smaller WIP

Suppose you reduced WIP from 30 open jobs to 10. Everyone is working on just these 10, and the rest wait in the queue in priority order. What’s the worst thing that could happen now?

Something gets stuck. If one active job is stuck, one of only ten slots is gone, and by the WIP rule you can’t take another from the queue. If four get stuck, four slots are gone. With WIP control, what goes in must come out fast. Once work starts, it must not wait.

So while a job waits in the queue, the preparatory work must be done, so that when it starts it doesn’t get stuck.

The specialist’s clinic

Visit a super-specialist doctor and look at how the clinic is arranged. There is a queue, because the specialist’s time is the clinic’s most precious resource. A team of junior doctors does the preparation: blood pressure, temperature, weight, past reports and prescriptions put in order. If a patient isn’t ready, they don’t go in, because a patient who walks in unprepared means the specialist can’t finish the diagnosis, and their time is interrupted and wasted.

Projects need the same arrangement: a separate team whose job is to make sure nothing from the queue enters the active zone without proper preparation. You wouldn’t spend a specialist’s time taking blood pressure.

Why preparation keeps getting skipped

In most environments the preparation is well known. In EPC, for example: complete approvals, authorisations and permissions; the complete material kit; tools and tackles. Yet under pressure, people start anyway, assuming the missing pieces can be expedited in parallel. Most often that fails.

When the same people do both, they live in a never-ending catch-up cycle between today’s execution and tomorrow’s preparation. Missing items cause interruptions and rework, which steal time from preparation, which causes more missing items. While top management talks about preparation without giving it an owner, full kit remains a slogan.

A dedicated full-kit team removes the conflict between working on current execution and preparing future work.

What “full kit” means

Full kit means everything is ready not only to start the execution but to complete it: every input, approval, material, tool and person the work will need until it’s done. The full-kit team’s job is simple to state: always keep a bank of work packets with complete preparation, ready to enter the active zone.

Pause and think: how many prepared work packets should the full-kit team keep ready?

  • As many as possible
  • Exactly one
  • Enough that kits are generated faster than the active zone completes work, so a bank builds up
  • It doesn’t matter

Watch the rate at which work leaves the active zone. If kits are produced faster than that, a bank of ready work builds up by itself, and the next slot never waits for preparation.

Frequently asked questions

Where do we find people for a full-kit team? WIP control frees a lot of people: with fewer jobs open, some resources are no longer needed on execution. Make them the full-kit team, with no new hiring.

Won’t customers panic if their project is “waiting in the queue”? In businesses where each project is a customer order, that’s a real worry. But with full kit, the waiting time is when the team engages the client: asking for clarifications, specifications and approvals. The client sees these inputs are vital and doesn’t panic. In fact, starting without complete information from the client is one of the biggest causes of slow-downs and rework, and full kit removes it.

Check your understanding

Answer all five. Get four right to complete the lesson.

1. With a lower WIP limit, a stuck job is especially costly because…

  • Workers get bored
  • It blocks one of only a few slots, and no new job may start
  • It is always late
  • Customers notice

What goes in must come out fast.

2. In the specialist’s clinic, an unprepared patient…

  • Goes in anyway
  • Is sent home
  • Is seen first
  • Doesn’t go in until prepared

The specialist’s time is too precious to interrupt.

3. Full kit means everything is ready…

  • To start and to complete the execution
  • Only to start
  • Only for the first week
  • Only for materials

Not just to begin, but to finish without interruption.

4. Where do people for the full-kit team usually come from?

  • New hiring
  • Consultants
  • Resources freed up by WIP control
  • Customers

Fewer open jobs free people for preparation.

5. Kits should be generated…

  • Slower than the active zone completes work
  • Faster than the active zone completes work, so a bank builds up
  • Only when asked
  • At month-end

A bank of ready kits means no slot waits for preparation.