Dragging the Digital Heels

It really shouldn't be that difficult to unsubscribe from an email list I'm no longer interested in.  So why does the stock message say "We'll comply with your request in the next ten days"? 

Back in the days with preprinted mailing labels, I could see where the delay would be.  But now??  With sophisicated, cheap and fast databases??  It strikes me as rude.  And certainly not an excellent process.  Maybe they want to keep bugging me with email, despite my request?? 

It is simply an example of a lousy process.  Waste of attention.  In our digital culture, waiting 10 days is no longer acceptable.  The marketplace has changed.  The process has to change with it. 

Some of you receive this blog via email.  There's an "unsubscribe" link at the very bottom of this email.  If these thoughts don't add value for you, feel free to unsubscribe!   And I'm pretty sure it will happen immediately!

And, one way or another, keep learning.

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Engaging Consumers to Fight Clutter

Is it possible to get untrained, uninitiated, unconnected people to participate in your efforts to deliver value? Consider this example that caught me totally by surprise in a very unexpected moment.

In October, I had the chance of a lifetime to take a 12 day vacation in Italy with my three sisters and our spouses. During our trip, we rented a house for a week in the not-too-touristy city of Lucca. Since we wanted breakfast and some other meals at the house, we had to figure out how to shop for groceries in a new city, not speaking any Italian.

Our spouses voted 4-0 that the Ely kids should make the first run to the grocery store. Once there, speaking no Italian, my sisters and I started to find the cereal, fruit, eggs, milk and chocolate...necessities each. In proper sisterly fashion, they dispatched me to find a shopping cart.

I observed other shoppers had carts but I could not see where to get one of my own. Finally, I noticed a covered rack of perfectly ordered carts in the parking lot. I went out to get one. And boy was I surprised by what I found.



The neat row of carts were cleverly linked together. Looking around for some visual clues, I saw some drawings which showed a one Euro coin (about $1.50) as the "key" to release the cart from the one ahead of it. My sister Anne came out looking for me. She fortunately had the right coin and plunked it into the small plastic gizmo mounted on the handle of the cart.



She pushed the red coin holder into the housing, the chain dropped and the cart popped loose.



We didn't exactly start singing opera but felt a little smarter. We did our shopping, were pleased my oldest sister's credit card was multi-lingual, loaded the groceries into our car and then wondered just what we were supposed to do with the cart. Pushing it back to the still-neat row of carts, I reversed the process, inserting the chain from the next cart into the plastic gizmo. Pop, out came the coin. And I finally realized what was going on. I thought "Wow, what a cool system!"

Rather than the messy, spread-out, disorganized pockets of carts we see in most US groceries, this simple system provided an incentive for shoppers to return the cart. And when shoppers do it right, the use of the cart is free. I simply had to "loan" a coin to the store for the time it took me to shop.

Interestingly, during the course of the week's stay in Lucca, we made other trips to the store and observed another social dimension of this system. We saw several shoppers accept the help to load their groceries into their car. In return, the helper took the cart back to the rack and pocketed the coin; effectively a tip for the help.

I subsequently learned one discount grocer operating in America has the same system for their Aldi Foods shopping carts.

Why do I mention this? Because well-conceived systems with visual tools and simple economic incentives can eliminate a lot of wasted effort. And if it is possible to do this in a grocery store parking lot, how much more inside our companies?? We have a lot of room for creativity.

Updated: I learned, via a comment, I was wrong in my assumption Aldi was an American-based store. It is owned by a German company. My mistake.

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Eight Reasons for Buffer Inventory

Why have any Work-In-Process Inventory? Why have any intermediate subcomponents in your system?

1. It is a shock absorber for uncertainty.
   
2. It shows you where flow ends…thus you must do pull.
   
3. It shows you where you sense variability in your process.
   
4. It insulates you from vendors who don’t deliver on time.
   
5. It provides a tool for managing your entire process by observing buffer quanitities.
   
6. It gives you a quantitative way to see changes in customer demand.
   
7. It forces you to “declare” your process steps to others, making the process more transparent and visible.
   
8. It allows you to measure your progress to the degree you can decrease buffer inventory sizes as a proportion of your total inventory.
   

WIP, in itself is not a waste. Too much of it is a waste. And paying attention to it is central.

Keep learning.

Waste gives birth to more Waste

Yesterday, I reviewed a large stack of invoices flowing through our company. In the midst of the pile, two caught my eye.

One particular vendor had two invoices. This vendor sells us some common, widely-available, commodity-like items. Each of the invoices had, along with the regular purchases, a single no-charge listing. One was for a T-shirt for a very popular NFL football team (size XL). On the other was a nice 2008 calendar. This triggered a memory of seeing a sleeve of Maxfli golf balls listed from the same vendor before.

Which got me wondering.

Is this vendor seeking to differentiate itself in a business where all of its competition sells pretty much the same stuff? By itself, that’s commendable. But, by giving away freebies, is it subtly enticing our company to NOT compare prices and service with other competitors? Look, I know the golf balls and the T-shirts are not free. I know we are paying for it, indirectly. It adds no value to our company, though it probably adds value to the golfers or football fans who benefit from the give-aways. Does it also drive waste for us, by paying too much for basic goods our company needs?

The realization triggered a direct review on my part of this vendor. You may want to poke around and do the same.

Wasting Attention

Kelly Forrister, a coach with David Allen of “Getting Things Done” fame, wrote recently on How much do you value your attention? She argued for the supreme value time has for each of us and how foolish we are to waste it. Specifically, she asked why we would hit “reply all” to an email when only one person needed the response. The response to all the others represented waste of their attention to open, read and process yet one more email.

Thus, I can contribute waste by asking someone to give up their attention to see something I pass along not worthy of their attention. I create muda with the simple click of a mouse.

Think about not wasting attention today in your email interactions.

And I truly hope I did not waste your attention with this post!

Palletizing Pallets

Palletizing Pallets

We had a need recently for two plastic pallets, so we ordered them. And here they are, just off the truck, sitting on our dock.

Puhleeeeeeze.

How do you ship pallets? Sure, you just stick ‘em on a pallet, slap on some shrink wrap and off they go!! Is this nuts or what?

Why pay for the wood pallet? Why not just secure the two plastic pallets together and ship them, with the label on top, which obviously works just fine? Now we have to dispose of the wood pallet. It fills up a landfill unnecessarily, is a hassle, is a home for rodents while it sits outside waiting for a disposal truck.

And who pays for the wasted pallet?? Yep, we do. We pay for the waste of our suppliers. We pay for this waste of overprocessing.

One of my Lean mentors, MaryPat Cooper, is fond of saying “You don’t have to worry about eliminating waste. You have to simply learn to see it. When you see it, you can’t stand it until you get rid of it.”

And I really wonder if this isn’t the case for our palletizing supplier. They put all their outbound stuff on pallets, so shipping pallets is simply no different. They just don’t see it.

That’s a management problem. That’s a leadership problem.

And all of this makes me wonder where I’m palletizing pallets and just don't see it. Just won't see it.