In his book on lean manufacturing, My Life and Work, (email johnhenry@changeover.com if you would like a copy) Henry Ford talked about documentation.

“We had been collecting tons of statistics because they were interesting. But statistics will not construct automobiles – so out they went.”

I have been preaching to my clients and readers for years about the importance of collecting information. You cannot run a manufacturing plant without data on how you did, how you are doing, and how you are going to do. But I also believe in too much information. Information that is not necessary can come back to bite you.

For instance, one pharmaceutical company in the 80’s had a “hot room” (120 degrees) for degassing sterilized bottles. Someone decided it would be a good idea to do a detailed, 50 point, temperature profile of the room. The data was filed and never used. The FDA, on a routine audit, came across it and dinged us for having this data but not acting on it. There was no requirement for the data, and we would have been in full compliance without it.

Too much information can obfuscate as much as it can illuminate.

In the 70’s Peter Grace, chairman of the WR Grace conglomerate explained how he dealt with his board of directors. He said he liked to keep them ignorant. He’d give them a 500 page binder before every board meeting, and they never read it. The idea was that if the directors did not know what he was doing, they would leave him alone.

We do this to ourselves. We packrat information we think might be useful. It accumulates, and we wind up with a pile of data that we can’t digest and can’t throw away. This can keep us from seeing the useful information. We build our own 500 page binders.

Manual data collection used to provide some restraint. Computerization, along with instant email, has eliminated these restraints.

You need enough information to do your job but not so much that you can’t. Find that balance point between the two.

Too much of a good thing may not be a good thing.