Visual Workplace Radio: Let The Workplace Speak

What causes complexity? What are its triggers? Two of them are out-of-date accounting systems and a big, bad bungling parts classification system. Today, Gwendolyn Galsworth, your host and author of Smart Simple Design, continues to peel back the onion on negative variety—complexity you can’t sell but have to manage nonetheless. Start with the realization that traditional accounting triggers variety proliferation. Why? Because GAAP is not designed to identify, track or quantify complexity or illuminate its causes. Instead, it can and often does trigger parts congestion. In contrast stands True Cost (Variety Costs + Function Costs + Control Costs)—the accurate means for determining the actual cost of putting function and difference in place and tracking them. The second negative trigger she discusses is a parts classification system, flooded with inaccuracies, redundancies and conflicting, useless, obsolete, incomplete data. Tune in and hear her eight guidelines for cleaning that up.