Output bunches at the end of a plan period because the target is periodic, and quality falls with the bunching.
A documented feature of Soviet-type enterprise management: materials arrived late, work idled through the early weeks, and the plan was met in a burst before the deadline. The cycle acquired its own vocabulary, running from hibernation through to the storm, and goods produced at the end of a period were reliably worse than those produced at the start.
In practice
- A sales team closes two-thirds of its quarter in the final fortnight, at discounts it would not have offered in the first.
- A hospital reporting monthly finds its discharges peak on the last two days of every month, and the readmissions follow.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Organizations & Bureaucracy
- Essay
- How organisations behave when nobody is steering