The meaning and management of time resources in organizations

The administration of the RRTT and the direct impact on the Cost

The formidable importance of time, as a resource available to anyone, which except for honorable exceptions, is not interpreted and even less dimensioned within organizations. Lean culture is up to now the one that is best viewed as a feasible resource to take advantage of for the direct benefit of business results, putting the conceptual vision of the resource and its use as an added value from 1st to 1st.

One of the keys to dimensioning this resource is to remove it from conventional analysis and put it as part of the strategic vision as one more resource that needs to be managed. Its potential begins to be seen when, from that point of view, we begin to understand that ultimately any service and / or product that we sell will be related to the hours of the people and / or equipment used in said processes, thus influencing the cost of said product and / or service. Therefore, any loss of time or mismanagement of said resource has a direct impact on our income and therefore on the future of the business.

Concept of Time as a Resource

Time is one of the scarcest resources within any organization and yet one of the most frequently wasted. Time is the only irrecoverable asset common to all companies, therefore it is a critical resource, when it is used, it is spent, and it will never again be available at the same time or at the same cost.

Many other assets are recoverable and can be used for some alternative purpose or offset, but the same cannot be done over time. Although this resource is extremely valuable because it goes directly to adding value, it is one of the assets that is handled with little care in companies and this may be so because time does not appear in the profit and loss tables or because it seems to be free. But if it is clear that El Tiempo is a manageable asset, and depending on the way we do it, it can generate the difference of good management.

RRTT Strategic Vision

Organizations are a universe of errors, waste and waste, the greater or lesser loss of time they produce is directly related to the presence of internal tools to induce reduction. The amount of tools is directly related to the Commitment and Attitude from the roles of senior and middle management and they must understand that ultimately we do not invoice Pesos, Euros or U $ S, if not Hs.Ho., Hs. Maq time., which are transformed into products or services that are transformed into money. Therefore, the profitability of said money will be directly proportional to the use of the RRTT and its impact, especially in the variable costs of the organization. This new model to understand RRTT is favored with the process approach within companies, hence the help generated by having an ISO 9000 certification.

Model for the Management of RRTT as Value Added

In general, in organizations we have indicators that reflect realities about time management but that are of time administration, which do not end up capturing virtuous realities with concrete actions for better use. This conventional view is of resource management, because it lacks a strategic vision of it as "Lost" with a direct impact on the added value, especially in the variable costs that end up affecting the contribution of companies' sales.

This explains the importance of advancing with internal tools in such a way that each of those involved in the processes becomes aware of the impact of the RRTT and that it is necessary to complement the criteria so that it is not only administrative, but in the place where things happen and the details are understood as a "loss." For this reason, there are specific tools and other general ones such as the 7 or 8 Lost, the Productive Maintenance methodology (TPM), Visual Control, SMED, ESIA, Kamban, etc., which lead directly to involve people and teams of work that are directly in the processes with the complementary approach where the message is:

The attitude to RRTT losses must be one of elimination, it cannot be one of administration and coexistence

To achieve complementation, a top-down strategic vision is required where organizational charts are generated with roles that totally or partially contain tasks related to time and variable spending within a framework and method that I call Spending Kaizen. Similar to what happens with the vision of quality, nobody wants to do things wrong, much less waste time, but reality follows different paths, hence for this not to happen it has to be reflected from above that the loss of time is like quality: From the 1st to 1st approach "They are not negotiable" or they are not adjustment variables.