Dec 14, 2010 | Leadership, Lean, Management, Operations
Measuring productivity involves a combination of hard and soft measures, the soft ones being both the critical ones and the ones that have most impact.
In 15 years of consulting across a range of businesses and industries, I have come to the conclusion that there are three factors that at a macro level positively influence the capacity of an enterprise to build productivity in a continuous manner.
- They are cross functional
- They are decentralised, with a loose/tight management culture
- They are connected to customers in a range of ways not associated with the immediacy of the next sale.
None of these are easy to achieve individually, but they seem to be mutually supporting, so setting out to support the evolution of all three over time pays dividends. To do so takes confident and inclusive leadership, and a long term view of the purpose of the organisation.
Dec 4, 2010 | Change, Demand chains, Lean
busy bar
Last Friday night I was in a small local club with a client, co-incidentally as they had the weekly member “badge-draw” which had jackpotted to $19,000. As you can imagine the joint was packed, it took 20 minutes lining up just to get a beer.
What struck me, apart from thirst, were the inefficient “production” conditions behind the bar, resembling many factories I have seen, but in this case, the problems were easily diagnosed.
- There was extra staff to handle the anticipated crowd, and they were absolutely run off their feet, but achieving little of value to customers
- All the lines to the 4 bar stations were similarly packed, there was no “quicker” line. At first glance, the “line” was running at its maximum capacity.
- Expedition was rife, people would see their mates in line, and get them to place a bigger order, annoying all who had lined up, and slowing the whole process considerably.
- The key production point, the beer dispensers, were idle perhaps 85% of the time, (I did not measure it, thirst was getting the better of me) as staff took orders, juggled the tills and change, communicated with customers about which beer was which, the total of the bill, the slow service, and Aunty Fanny’s kidney stones, and did all the other stuff that created bottlenecks in front of the key “production” point.
In short, there was no “flow” at all, it was a mess, and the sales lost were enormous, as the 19K jackpot went off at the first draw, and the crowds thinned out immediately as they went home thirsty, and angry.
How easy would it have been to have one staff member pulling beers, and moving them to an “inventory” point for delivery to a thirsty waiting customer? Increasing the estimated 15% utilisation of the dispenser, would have removed the order backlog very quickly and easily, and would have removed a major source of customer irritation, increased sales, and reduced the obvious stress levels of staff.
Whilst only one person could win the 19k, everyone else would have been much happier!
