Episode 6: Knowledge Flow - with Andy Barr

Managing physical production lines is straightforward compared to managing the flow of knowledge work - where tasks are invisible, work arrives in the "dead of night," and priorities constantly shift. 

In this episode of Flow by Design, Tom is joined by Andy Barr, who reflects on a 25-year career within Rolls-Royce engineering. Having spent decades coordinating design, stress, and product-development teams, Andy shares how agile and Kanban principles can be adapted specifically for complex knowledge environments. 

Together, they explore:

• How paper request sets and digital tickets get dropped onto engineers' desks without manager visibility, and how Kanban visualisation pays back the team. 
• Moving beyond superficial 5S exercises to create meaningful visual management that connects individual tasks to enterprise-level hardware flow. 
• Why organisations struggle with competing long-term and short-term demands, and how capacity allocation quarterly models prevent priority "pinball." 
• Why digital connectivity has increased cognitive disruption, and what modern engineering can learn from historical, paper-based visual design walls. 
• Why "outlawing" or hiding blockers deprives leaders of critical systemic data, and how visualising bottlenecks enables targeted continuous improvement.