From LinkedIn

How to deal with a "necessary evil"?

You often hear phrases like: "We have to keep a certain amount of inventory as a cushion in case a piece of equipment fails or develops a defect. It may be an evil, but it's a necessary one: we don't want to stop a plant that cost millions just because a machine breaks!"

I could accept a sentence like this, provided it is a temporary condition. The problem is that, in people's thinking, too much emphasis usually gets placed on "necessary" and too little on "evil". So, gradually, a "necessary evil" comes to be perceived as a "necessity", forgetting that it is an evil we have to kill as soon as possible. After a while, what is actually an evil (something that consumes resources without giving any value to your customer) may even end up being perceived as a value-added activity. Then everybody stops even thinking about how to kill the beast, while the beast grows and eats more and more every day.

Example: if you think that reducing die change time is impossible and that die change is a "necessary evil", at some point your eyes may stop seeing it as an evil, and you may start designing your system accordingly (generally increasing batch sizes to dilute the "necessary" cost of the die change).

I've often seen slogans and campaigns posted on the walls, from the President's office to the shop floor, saying "Eliminate waste". In my opinion they are complete nonsense: everybody naturally tends to eliminate waste… when the waste is clearly recognised!

What can you do?

Stop passively accepting that something is "inevitable", and always look for different, better ways of getting the job done: never throw in the towel and resignedly declare that nothing can be done.

From experience, I've learnt that how you approach a problem completely changes your chances of finding the solution. And the most powerful tool I use (which I learnt from Socrates, by the way) is asking questions. For example:

• if somebody says "Eliminating transportation is impossible", I ask: "How can we eliminate transportation?"
• if somebody says "Being right first time is impossible", I ask: "How can we get to right first time?"

As simple as that: you have to turn your mindset 180 degrees, away from the problem and towards the solution.

I can assure you that when you start focusing on solutions, solutions start to come.