The “Pizza Problem”: How Batching Is Silently Killing Your Agency

The situation seems simple enough:

There are 2 Pizza Production Lines (pictured below).

Each Production Line’s goal is to finish all 3 pizzas first.

Each Line has 1 person (although it could be 3 people each and the answer will not change).

In Line 1, the person will roll 3 pizzas, top 3 pizzas, and then slice 3 pizzas.

In Line 2, the person will roll 1 pizza, top 1 pizza, and then slice pizza 1.

They will then do the same for pizza 2, and the same for pizza 3.

Which line makes all 3 pizzas first, Line 1 or Line 2?

Why?

?? The (Not So) Obvious Answer

At first blush, the answer seems obvious to most agency owners: Line 1 – because batching things together is faster.

Henry Ford knew it, restaurants know it, and it seems like we’ve been told it our whole lives… so it must be true.

But if you actually tried to do this exercise, or another similar exercise like the one in this Youtube video, you would see that Line 2 would finish considerably faster.

How is that so, and why is it “silently killing my agency?”

?? Definitions

First, let’s define Batching (Line 1) vs Single-Piece Flow (Line 2).?

Batching: is when a fixed quantity of a product is produced in a single production run.

When batching, the tasks are produced in batches and moved to the next stage of production only after the batch is complete.

Batching is like multi-tasking, and while we intuitively know that multi-tasking is not as efficient as focusing on 1 thing, we are blinded here.

Single-Piece Flow: is the constant movement of a single piece of value to the customer.

Flow is achieved when there is no waiting time in between steps.

This reduction in wait time is what makes Single Piece Flow faster.

?? Why is Batching So Bad?

Batching isn’t just bad because it’s slower...

It’s bad because of the customer and management issues it creates.

Let’s keep with the pizza theme and the two different pizza-making Lines.?

In the first Line you batch pizzas, and in the second Line you will produce the pizzas in flow.

The Process Time (the time it takes to make each do 1 part of a process, or in this instance, create 1 part of the pizza) is 1 minute for each Line.

The difference is in batch size: Line 1 will batch 100 pizzas at a time, and Line 2 will make 1 pizza at a time.

I want you to think about these 3 questions before going down to the answers below:

1.??What is the difference in Lead Times (the total time to deliver a pizza) between the two lines, and how does that impact the customers?

2.??Say you’re managing this team, and after the whole process is done, you realize Pizza #4 is bad. What do you do for each line, and how does that impact you as a manager?

3.??You’re still managing the team. In the middle of the day, you want to know what pizza # you’re on. How do you find out, and how does that impact you as a manager?

??? Answers

1.?What is the difference in lead times (the total time to deliver a pizza) between the two lines, and how does that impact the customers?

In Line 1, the Lead Time is 303 minutes.

This means it will take 303 minutes before all of the pizzas are ready to deliver to your customers.

And you wouldn't be able to deliver your first one until minute 203.

Now, for those of you doing simple math here, you might realize that 100 pizzas x 1 minute x 3 people = 300 minutes.

So why is it 303 minutes, not 300?

Well, remember how earlier we mentioned the additional wait time is one reason why batching is slower?

Picking up and moving 100 pizzas is going to take some time... probably another minute to a minute and a half... so we have to add that time to the lead time.

In Line 2, the Lead Time is 3 minutes... a 99% reduction. ??

So not only is Single-Piece Flow faster from a process perspective, but it’s also faster from a delivery perspective.

This is why most agencies I work with start with 3-4 week lead times before they deliver an email, creative, SEO project, etc. when in reality there is usually ~1 day of actual work in the creation of the deliverable.

From a customer perspective, batching causes excessive wait time.?

?

2.?Say you’re managing this team, and after the whole process is done, you realize Pizza #4 is bad. What do you do?

In Line 1, you have to check every single one of the pizzas in the batch, even if only 1 of them was bad.

And potentially have to re-make all 100 pizzas.

In Line 2, you just check the pizza prior.

Was it bad? If no, great.

If it was bad, you can easily go back and re-trace the root cause.

So batching hides errors, because you won’t know until the next batch that your previous batch was bad.

And if there is an issue, it causes more wait time and considerable re-work.

?

3.?You’re still managing the team. In the middle of the day, you want to know what pizza # you’re on. How do you find out?

In Line 1, you won’t be able to because each person on your team is completing a portion of the pizza-making process, and not complete pizzas.

In Line 2, you can know exactly what number pizza you are on because you are completing 1 of them at a time.?

So batching hides flow so you can not see progress.

No bueno for you as a manager.?

OK, OK. Enough of this pizza talk.

?? How does this impact my agency?

1. If you are batching production, you are killing your time to value and time to delivery. Your lead times are high, and you will never be able to decrease them. Considering your clients always want things yesterday, you will never be able to catch up, which can lead to overhiring.
2. You are structuring work for your team in a way that will unnecessarily increase errors and revisions, and limit your ability to find the root cause of them. Every time a client sends something back to your team, they mentally note that down. Once a few of these mental notes happen, they start to question your partnership, and that can create client churn.
3. And you can’t see the progress of your team to understand if you will deliver projects on time or not. So all those promises you made to your client to "deliver this one project on time" just went up in smoke... along with their contract.

?? What To Do Next

I hope I was able to convince you that batching is not optimal for your agency.

I do want to note that while single-piece flow is an ideal state, it is not always realistic for all agency work.

However, the closer you can get to single-piece flow, the better your results will be.

If you are interested in how to create great agency processes that remove batching and decrease your lead times, errors, and revisions, DM me on LinkedIn!