A Salty New Year

I think salt gets a bad rap.  It's wonderfully comforting and yet oh so bad for us.  We're always being told to avoid it, reduce it, stay away from it.  It's linked to everything from high blood pressure to cancer.  (I think it even kills puppies.)  And yet we often overlook the fact that salt is absolutely necessary for all human life.  As an electrolyte, sodium is vital to maintaining our body's fluid balance.  And the more output our bodies produce (in the form of physical work) the more of it we need to consume.  Not only is salt not evil, we actually really need the stuff.  In the proper quantity and at the proper times.

Salt is a lot like inventory.  We all know how bad inventory is, and we're always trying to figure out ways to hold less of it.  But inventory, of and by itself, is no more "bad" than salt.  The fact is that without it you couldn't have flow or level loading.  And like salt, the more output you produce the more of it you need.  It is essential to a successful operation.  In the proper quantity and at the proper times.

So as we continue our work to banish waste from our value streams, lets not demonize inventory too much in the process.  As with a well-balanced diet let's just be smart about how much we use and where we use it.

Happy New Year!!