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We get into the shoes of the office manager. Basic Supply Algorithms

I decided to write this article after visiting one office - there was no black tea there. There was plenty of green, but no black. And there were interruptions in coffee.

And after each visit to an authorized dealer, when the car breaks down, there remains a desire to write this article. Once I even wrote, through the feedback form on the dealer’s website. Because I'm sick of running and buying running parts myself.

In general, I want to tell in simple words about the most common methods of organizing procurement. To make it really simple and clear, I’ll pull all these methods onto what everyone knows and sees: supplying the office with tea, coffee and sugar.

So, imagine that you somehow suddenly became an office manager. The previous one quit a month ago and went to live in Indonesia. How he did what is unknown. And you need to organize a normal office supply, full of programmers, testers, team leaders, managers, etc.

Volumetric scheduling


Space-scheduling, or OKP, is the most buzz for the supplier, because it requires a minimum of effort and responsibility.

The essence lies in the name itself. You are simply given a list of what you need to buy, indicating the nomenclature and quantity. For example, 10 packs of black tea, 5 green, 15 packs of coffee beans, etc. There is usually an annotation to the list, such as "this is a plan for the month." So it turns out volumetric scheduling - you need to buy a certain amount for a certain period. A period is usually called a planning horizon.

Where this plan came from doesn’t really bother you. All you need to do is find suppliers and order. Well, or on foot with a string bag to Auchan to run away. On this, your mission is completed before the next planning period.

Particularly lazy suppliers are asked to make them a plan for the year. Then you need to work, in fact, once a year.

Planning, i.e. identification of needs can occur in several ways.
For example, you can ask all employees: how much tea, coffee and sugar do you add? Everyone will say something, you will sum up the evidence, and get a plan. You can delegate the collection of requirements to managers, then you get something like internal applications, so beloved in factories (when one unit orders something from another).

Another option is to draw up a plan based on actual indicators of the past period. For example, it is known that in December 20 packs of black tea, 10 green tea, 40 packages of coffee beans were drunk. You can simply take and copy this data into the plan for January, and do it every month.

And you can take into account seasonality - for example, making a plan for the summer, take data for the winter, but halve the numbers. It is clear, after all, that in summer there are fewer people (holidays), and hot drinks do not go so well (hot).

Frenzied exotic - screw here MRP, the methodology for determining the material resources of the enterprise. True, then you will definitely be kicked out of office. Just make everyone make plans.

Let the managers make a sales plan. Then, proceeding from it, let programmers and team leaders outline a production plan - well, what are they going to do this year, what kind of work, projects, etc. And then hire and put in a person who will create a “programmer's job specification” for you, and, in addition, a flow chart. In the resource specification it will be written, for example: for the production of one hour of work of the programmer, 0.75 bags of black tea, 20 g of sugar and 8 g of coffee beans are required.

Well, that’s it. Programmers will write you a program that will “bother” production plans - to calculate how much you need to buy coffee, tea, etc. to produce the right amount of work for programmers.

The advantages of such a scheme are obvious. You, as a supplier, live easily and simply. No rumors, the plan is prepared in a quiet mode, ahead of time, and at the right time you just make an order to the supplier. It is also convenient for financiers - the amount that you spend on the purchase is known in advance and accurately known. So, you can safely include it in the cash flow budget and, at the right time, just pay the bill from the supplier.

But the rest of the guys will have to tight. First of all, to those programmers whom you will expel from jobs to accommodate the entire purchased volume of coffee, tea and sugar. Especially if they are stocked for a year. After all, we have an office, not a factory, and there is no warehouse. There is a small utility room, but the sys.admin and the cleaning lady with her mops are already located there. And toilet paper must be stored somewhere.

And the most interesting - very soon you will not have black tea left. And there will be too much green. Because the plan drawn up for the year will become obsolete in a week. Telepaths are still on vacation, and calculating the need for any long period is simply unrealistic. Employees will be added, or vice versa - they will quit, their preferences will change, or it turns out that they simply made a mistake in the calculations.

OKP is very insensitive to changes in demand. He doesn't give a damn. As they say, what was ordered, then drink, even if you change your mind.

And then the director will come running and ask: where is the money? Working capital, living, real money. But there are none, they all went to buy tea, coffee and sugar. Tea will have to pay salaries, pay for electricity, arrange barter for new laptops. Money is frozen in tea and coffee.

Order by order


This scheme is more complicated for you, because you will have to deal with procurement often. You come and announce: well, guys, from this day on I buy exactly that and exactly as much as you order. And you will be responsible for the purchased volume personally.

The main thing here is not to enlarge the purchase. Let each employee order tea, coffee and sugar for himself. He writes an order to you, and his boss - endorses it to share responsibility with his subordinate. And you just take this order and forward it to the supplier.

So usually laptops are bought, but tea with coffee is also possible.

The benefits are obvious. You, again, do not need to bathe at all. Just execute the application - send it to the supplier, get the invoice, forward it to the financial department for payment, wait for delivery and give the lucky pack of tea to the lucky one.

It’s a bit more complicated with money - the budget is not known in advance. Today ordered 10 packs of tea, tomorrow - 50. Financiers will rebel and will require restrictions and limits. For example, in kind - no more than 20 packs of black tea per month. Something like limit-fence cards.

And here the most interesting story begins, which the “order by order” scheme brings with it. In simple terms, this is srach.

Judge for yourself. Everyone made an order for himself - which means that the tea he bought was his. There is no general supply, only personal. It doesn’t matter if it’s the stock of a department, team or personally of some kind of programmer. Share? Not. After all, a person went through a complicated procedure of ordering, sighting, coordinating payment, etc.

So, someone will sit with tea, and someone without. Well, those who missed the "transfer window." Ordered - drink, forgot - drag from home.

If financiers set a limit on procurement, then the cost will be about using this limit. Everyone will try to order more so as not to be left without such an important resource. And the limit is not rubber. All programmers will have to be friends with you, the office manager, to secure a priority right to order. Prepare a box in the table for chocolates.

And then you need a new employee who will deal with the reallocation of resources. Let's call it PDO - Planning and Dispatch Department. You will be carried the application for the purchase, and he - the application for the movement of reserves. Well, it’s like “I ask you to take 10 packs of black tea from the testers and give it to us, developers, because we are finalizing the project, and we really need it.” A person from PDO will have to take a whole cupboard for chocolates.

And in the end, the director will come running and scream: why does no one work? And when they work, they share sugar with spoons.

Theory of System Constraints


The theory of system constraints, or simply CBT, is an Elijah Goldratt management and planning approach. In general, CBT, as an approach, is universal, and will find a place in any activity. Based on this concept, several practical tools have been created for various industries and processes, but the most widespread CBT is found in the supply.

In different systems you will find several variants of the names of this method, but TOC is almost never mentioned. For example, BBV (drum-buffer-rope), stock holding, consumption planning, safety stock, etc.

The essence is the same - buy as much as you consume. And more often. From the point of view of the programmer / engineer, such a scheme looks gorgeous, because you don’t need to think there at all - it is completely self-regulating.

So, you come on the first day, take a string bag and drag on to Auchan. Take black and green tea, coffee beans, sugar. How much - generally do not care. But better - less. Take one at a time.

Then you decide for yourself that you will go to Auchan once a day. This will be called the “replenishment period”. You can call it a “time buffer,” or just a buffer.

Further even easier. Come with a string bag to the kitchen, carefully place everything on a shelf, and go to work for yourself. Just be patient and stress-resistant, because in an hour they will come running to you and say that the coffee is over.

Well, think up something, say busy, let them endure. In the morning, go into the kitchen and see what remains of your purchase yesterday. Then subtract what is left of what you bought and get your daily intake.

If something is missing at all, buy more today. For example, two packs of coffee instead of one. If green tea is left, do not buy it today.

Now a little terminology. The amount of each position that you want to keep in the kitchen is the target level. It is also called the "buffer." The picture you found in the morning in the kitchen is the status of the buffer, i.e. percentage of actual stock of buffer size.

For example, if you bought a pack of green tea, and in the morning you see that half is left, the buffer status is 50%. If there is no grain coffee at all, then the buffer status is 0%. And if someone dragged two packs of black tea from home, and they already drank yours yesterday, then the buffer status is 200%.

CBT does not like picking in exact numbers, or, as Goldratt himself said, measuring noise. It was necessary, he said, to watch from a bird's eye view. And divide the buffer into three zones. Buffer status 0-33% - red zone, 33-66% - yellow zone, 66-100% - green zone. Color yourself for the buffer status above 100% think of yourself, I usually do purple. There is also a negative buffer status, it is marked with black, but this is not our case.

The rest is simple. For each position, determine the color of the buffer status. If red, buy more today than yesterday. If yellow - as much as yesterday. If green and above - do not buy at all.

The question arises: how many units increase the buffer? Goldratt said - take care of the calculations, adjust by one third of the buffer. Well, in our example this will not work, we bought one at a time, and on an industrial scale - it’s quite normal. For the first time, you can double the buffer.

The red color says that consumption is faster than replenishment, and you need to increase the size of the buffer so as not to fall under a hungry ration. Yellow color says that everything is normal, and it is necessary to live. Green indicates that consumption is lagging, and you overstock.

Actually, that's all. They counted by colors what and how much to buy, fled to Auchan, and work on yourself further. In the morning, go into the kitchen and repeat the calculations. This is the self-regulation of the system. No need to think at all. Of course, apart from thinking, determining the status of the buffer.

Gradually, the size of the buffers will settle down, and you just need to replenish the supply. Then you can give the office supply of tea and coffee to someone less smart than you. Issue a simple instruction: every morning in the kitchen there should be 10 packs of black tea, 3 - green, 15 - grain coffee and 20 packs of refined tea. Buy what is missing.

And then you just need to glance sometimes at how it is there. After all, the situation is changing - seasonality, holidays, preferences, number of employees, etc. You just need to look at the color of the buffer, and adjust it a little for individual positions.

Does coffee turn red in a few days? Increase the buffer by one third. Is green tea always green? Minus a third. Well, etc.

And all in chocolate, after several days of self-tuning. Yes, in real practice, of course, they don’t start with one pack - they just take historical information about consumption and start the first day with these numbers. This is just the starting point of the system’s self-regulation.

The financier now again knows how much money is needed for tea and coffee, because purchase volumes are rare and are known quite accurately. The employees are happy because everything is always there, and with a small reserve. The system administrator is happy because you do not drive him out of the back room. You are happy because working is easy and simple.

And the director is happy because everyone is happy.

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