Kaizen Success Stories From Kaizen Kreativity Book

 

 Kaizen Success Stories

          Some of the stories that I am going to share with you only used some of the recommended complete tool set for a Kaizen but the tools that were used worked very well. I always recommend that the Kaizen team complete all the tools unless a breakthrough can occur with just using just some of the tools. The problem is many members of the team want to complete the process early and very often steps and important impacts on the voice of the customer are overlooked.  It is no use being dogmatic on Kaizen methodology especially if the team can achieve success with some of the tools, and then by all means take the quicker method. In order to protect some clients and colleagues, I had to keep the stories somewhat less detailed than I would like.

Employee Complaints Answered in 29 Days versus 180 Days

          The grievance of a worldwide logistics system was notoriously slow and employees had to wait on average of 180 days for the grievances to be answered. Worse yet employees had a hard time finding out the status of their grievance. There were individual case workers assigned to each grievance who were competent but often hit roadblocks in trying to close the grievance case. The case workers were assigned specific cases and were expected to have the case from start to finish. There was very little collaboration between case workers.

          The department received an ultimatum from their executive, either you improve the process, or action would be taken to improve it including the threat of job loss. A Kaizen was begun under tense circumstances. The team had to be trained, on the fly, on the tools as the Kaizen process progressed. The team would not let the Kaizen leader postpone or delay the Kaizen. It was a drawn out brutal process from start to finish.

          The case workers clearly understood all the steps in the As Is process, and the Kaizen Leader discovered a surprise. A computer system and report that the department looked at as a burden actually contained data about the length of all the steps in the As Is process and quickly confirmed which steps had the most delays.  This system would now be used to visibly show the status of each and every case to everyone. The team quickly brainstormed ideas to overcome the delays in the process. The Kaizen Leader made suggestions to improve visibility of individual case progress and the department put in a collaboration or help system between case workers. It was discovered that one delay in the As Is was caused by ill will and animosity with another department which had to approve the next step. An escalator clause was put in place that required this department to approve or disapprove in 48 hours or the executive’s second in charge would make a decision. All case progress was made visible in a team room on a large tracking board.

          The six month average for grievance cases cycle time dropped to 29 days. The positive impact on employee morale was also documented in the annual employee survey.

Reducing Workload via Kaizen Tools

When I took over as head of a Procurement Division there were three Plants with over $500,000,000 in purchases per year. I was to transform Purchasing into Supply Management with some Lean Six Sigma tools. Plant senior management decided to downsize my department at the plant where I was located at from eight to four, starting from day one. The plant manager was not committed to the transformation attempt and wanted it to fail. I decided to do everything in my power to not fulfill his wish.

At the first meeting I had with the department team two people started to cry. They did not know how they were going to keep up with the work. I pledged that within six months, they would have enough spare time, that they would be coming to me asking me what to do to move the business ahead. They all laughed at the statement. I volunteered to take over buying of one of the major components in the plant. I of course had no idea about the workload involved in the buying process.  The next day four file drawers of paperwork for the component were moved into my office. I spent a week creating a database to help me manage the component which had no previous reliable information. Eventually a supplier helped me improve the database and ordering process.

I soon found out that purchasing data was scarce or non-existent. Purchasing employees could not give me any good summary statistics and were so caught up in firefighting that confusion reigned supreme. No one could adequately explain the purchase order process. There were no standard operating procedures.  Undaunted, I actually rolled up my sleeves and typed purchase orders myself just to get an idea of what happens. We did a process map of the purchase order process. We locked to doors to the department while we had Kaizen process mapping meetings (As Is).

We all went on a data expedition and since I knew some computer programming and could query from the company databases we started to compile our data. We discovered that we had approximately 40,000 transactions or buys per year. By using a Pareto chart we saw that over 80% of the purchase orders were under $200.  The vast majority of our purchases were small dollar items. Additionally only twenty people did about 90% of these buys. They were our super users or power requisitioners.  We decided to concentrate on them and educate them about our efforts to transform the entire process. We designed a short order purchase form for purchases under $1000 that they could use. They participated in the design of the form. No interface with purchasing was required for the form. The middleman (purchasing) was eliminated. The only catch was they had to buy from a list of our preferred suppliers. If they wanted to deviate from the list they needed to get our approval.

We did a new process map (To Be) for the short order form with the super users participating.  We created a manual and SOP for the super users with the preferred supplier list, contact information and basic purchasing terms, rules etc. We posted a process flow map in the department for everyone to see.

Our workload was drastically reduced and the buyers did not have to worry about these small purchase orders. In addition out suppliers remarked that the error rate on these short orders was greatly reduced. We recognized super users who had error free months and who worked well with suppliers. We eventually switched to purchase cards for these twenty super users which practically eliminated all paperwork.

Finally we had time for supplier rationalization or reduction and strategic initiatives. Again we mined the data and found out that we had over 20,000 suppliers. With hard work and consolidation of buys we got that number down to 209. We set up preferred suppliers and greatly simplified the entire process from requisition to payment.  We standardized payment terms which greatly relieved accounts payables workload who soon became our allies.

          We essentially used all the tools of the Kaizen event but not quite in the sequence order that is recommended.

In four months not six, my employees had the confidence and trust in me to come to my office and admit that they had nothing to do that day and ask what could they work on to move the business ahead. Most of this progress was due to using some simple Lean Six Sigma process improvement tools.

Employee Orientation Shortened Via the Kaizen Way

After completing my new employee orientation at a new company that hired me, I was astounded by the redundancy and the lack of coordination of the process. Essentially employees were given a checklist and told to get signatures or initials on a laundry list of orientation items. No time limit or deadline was provided. Employees were put on their own, to go about and about, to complete the checklist. It took me two weeks to complete the employee checklist and much of the “orientation” that I received from each department on the checklist was haphazard at best.

A Kaizen team was formed which I led to look at the orientation process and recommend changes. The team actually walked the process and was astounded that the entire process walking distance was at least three miles and often the person who was supposed to “orientate” the new employee was not available. There was a high level of frustration with all new employees as they went through the process.

The team did a Voice of the Customer analysis and discovered that about 80% of the items on the checklist were not really essential and did not require the new employee to be physically present in the department indicated on the list.

In designing the As Is process, the Kaizen team made heavy use of Internet and invented a New Employee Orientation Web site. Many of the departments on the check off list already had orientation PowerPoints or webinars for new employees. All the Kaizen team had to do was organize them on the website and make sure the departments kept them up to date. In addition we provided access for new employees to work related information like phone lists, email lists, FAQs etc. that drastically reduced their anxiety and questions.

The cycle time for the orientation was reduced from two weeks down to 2-3 days or less. More importantly a much better first impression was made on the new employee.

Software Data Collection and Kaizen Techniques

A major purchasing software system was to be installed at a multi-national company. The software was specific to each plant or service department. Teams of consultants would visit each plant and try to gather the necessary data that the software installers need to install the software of the particular plant. That data was then given to the software installer to feed to the purchasing software system and then the system went live.

The error rate for the new plant systems was atrocious and the punch lists (errors) were huge. The client was growing increasingly skeptical about the software.

The software installers decided to have a Kaizen event. They did invite some data collectors to participate. It became blatantly obvious that there was no standard data collection process or technique that the data collectors used. Data was provided on spreadsheets, hand written papers, MS word documents etc. There was no order or structure to how the data was collected. When the software installers received the data it was almost impossible to be accurate with it.

The Kaizen leader took a bold step and asked the software installers to design the As Is process from scratch, not an easy Kaizen task but necessary. The installers noted that there were 420 different screens that data had to be entered on when the software was installed. They brainstormed what to do and came up with a plan to design an Excel spreadsheet with 420 sheets or one for each screen. Essentially each spreadsheet somewhat mimicked the entry screen with instructions about the data.  The data collectors in the Kaizen not only agreed to the new As Is but sold it to the other data collectors. The spreadsheet soon became more and more sophisticated and made the data collector’s job much easier by eliminating duplicate entries and creative macros.

The data entry error rate dropped from over 50% to less than 1 percent. The client’s confidence in the new procurement system rose and they ordered multiple new installations.

Storerooms and Listening to Customers (VOC)

One of the first supply chain projects that we did at a large chemical company in Alabama which involved frequently used MRO parts by the maintenance folks. First we did an As Is process map! Highly paid maintenance personnel ($30 per hour) were driving in pickup trucks, in pairs, to go to a central storeroom to pick up basic and frequently-used parts. The time lost was enormous. The feedback we got from the maintenance personnel (VOC) was that they did not trust the current system at all. We were a chemical company, and our expertise or core competency was not in storeroom- or MRO-parts management. We started a supplier search for dis­tributors with expertise in management parts and storerooms. We decided to basically outsource the management of these fre­quently used parts to the distributor. They examined our store­room data, provided us software, and soon discovered the one hundred parts most-frequently used by our maintenance folks.

In other words the distributor did the To Be process map for us! Since they had strong credibility the Kaizen team formed. They then set up many free-issue or mini-storerooms throughout the large chemical plant’s grounds. Our mainte­nance folks traveled or walked to these areas to get the parts they needed. The distributor maintained and restocked the areas. The distances were much shorter and conveniently decentral­ized. The maintenance people set up a steering committee (another best practice) with the distributor to review parts usage and add or subtract parts to the mini-storerooms. In Kaizen terminology this was To Be metrics! The process was greatly simplified, and the maintenance people soon developed a high degree of confidence in the distributor and the streamlined system. Then the distributor offered to reorganize our storeroom and barcode all the parts at no charge. We quickly agreed.

In another month, a shocking development occurred. We were not sure how to quantify the savings from this project and were worried that many people would not appreciate the soft savings. As stated above, many of our maintenance people had no confidence in our current storeroom system. We publicized a return-any extra-parts-with-no-questions-asked week. This was run much like a fine-free day at your local library. Our maintenance people returned over $2 million-worth of bogey or just-in-case inventory that they had been squirreling away in their toolboxes and other areas. They’d done this because they’d had zero confidence in the old system. Our new supplier accepted the parts back and gave us a large credit for the returned parts that were still usable. The distributor kept us abreast of any new storeroom-management techniques and technologies, including the RFID (Radio Frequency Identifica­tion Device). We developed a long and lasting relationship with them which became the model for our other chemical plants.

By just using a few tools of the Kaizen methodology we experienced a huge success!

Kaizens Work for Marketing Plans!

I once was involved with a major transformation of a world­wide logistics organization. At the start of the transformation, they had twenty-six divisions. They had decided to reorganize and needed some basis for the reorganization. I suggested that we first do a marketing plan, which was greeted by disbelief and catcalls. I explained my strategy and said that first we had to find out what our market segments were and agree on that. We did fifty focus groups, deep marketing research and narrowed down our customer segments to six. This was a monumental voice of the customer exercise and we received a good short list of what our customers really valued.

However, the very first thing we did was do an As Is process map of where the organization was in the present state with all the reporting relationships and responsibilities. This was a long hard and complicated process but the Kaizen team discovered that there was much duplication and that 95% of the steps were not really valued by our customers. We then did a To Be process map of the future recommended state of the organization.

What we did next was again look at all twenty-six divisions and try to deter­mine exactly what each did. We then looked at it in terms of which of the six customer segments they served the best, or were most likely to serve the best. Much to our surprise, there were no “in-between” divisions; each division fell within a particular customer segment. All of the division heads agreed with their customer segment alignment. The consensus process was really very readily accepted.

Once we presented this information to the CEO, he imme­diately suggested that we consolidate twenty-six divisions into six. The Kaizen team had done its homework. Obviously this Kaizen team took more time that a traditional Kaizen but the tools used were practically the same. Each division would now have a customer champion, whose main mission was to meet the needs of that particular customer seg­ment. After much work, job analysis, and feedback from the divi­sion heads, we consolidated into six divisions. We eliminated over 600 positions, but we did avoid layoffs with attrition and by offering early retirement.

 Over the years, the organization had gotten out of touch with their mission and customer base. Once the reorganization was executed, when we got our customer-service metrics, we were pleasantly sur­prised to see that they’d improved dramatically. Now the organization’s employees could focus more on actual customers and their needs, instead of defending their organizational silos. Soon other organizations asked how we had accomplished this, and we shared our data with them.

Training Employees Using As Is Process Maps

Once I worked for a company that had decided to put in a massive, enterprise-resource-planning system. I was in the supply manage­ment area and had been assigned to MRO and specifically the store­rooms of the company. The ERP or Enterprise Resource Planning software company insisted that they have representatives from each area of the company to help them in the definition phase. Since no one in my area volunteered to work with the software company, my boss appointed me. I first viewed this assignment as another tough task and more work on my already full plate. I went to a rigorous three-week train-the-trainer program that the software company provided. Then I struck out and visited all the storerooms and conducted training sessions for the storeroom personnel.

Unfortunately, many of the personnel didn’t really believe that the system was going to come their way, and they didn’t pay very much attention to my initial training sessions. I did however insist that they do an As Is process map of how storeroom parts are tracked, issued and ordered. They wanted to continue with the old disjointed systems that they used to run the storeroom. In other words they did not see the need to change or improve their As Is process. The training classes were hard enough, but with apathetic employees, they became difficult and painful. I did, however, pick up expert knowledge about how the storerooms were run, their inventory systems, and their ordering systems. I had a large collection of As Is process maps for all fifty storerooms. I did a rough affinity chart to see how similar the methods were.

When the ERP system went live, I was soon deluged with requests to repeat the training sessions. The employees had come to the realization that they had to learn new systems, and they had to make them work. They had no choice in designing the As Is process map as it was already in place. I literally would fly to six or seven plants in a week and re-conduct the classes. I made sure that I conducted these classes with patience and enthusiasm.

What really saved me were the As Is process maps that I had kept. When I started the class I made them visible and got instant credibility for knowing how their old processes worked. They knew that I understood their methods and would teach them to adapt to the new system and processes. The clincher was that I had the new As IS process map, already mapped out, and we could compare them side by side.

My good efforts in these sessions, as reflected in the ratings I received, soon got back not only to the software supplier but also to my boss. Even after these additional training sessions, I acted as an informal help desk to many of the storerooms throughout the country.

Using just two tools normally used in a Kaizen greatly improved the rollout success.

Monthly Letters Equals Kaizen Discipline

I had just taken over a department and was struggling with understanding exactly what my employees were working on and what their key projects were. Most reporting to me was informal, inconsistent and incomplete.

 I was involved in trying to transform the department based on the new company strategies.  I actually did conduct an As Is process map session trying to understand who was responsible for what and who completed certain tasks. Quite frankly it was a disaster and I came out more confused than when I started the process. I reflected and understood that I had tried to do too much, in other words my Kaizen charter was way too aggressive. I then did a survey of a few other department heads to understand their approaches to their employees. I found that the more successful ones required their employees to write monthly letters in a fixed or template like fashion. This was in fact sort of a To Be like process.

Then I insisted upon monthly letters for my employees. I created a specific format and encouraged them to incorporate metrics and data into their monthly letters. I wanted them to be focused not only on their personal goals but on our department goals. Initially, the whining from employees was fierce. These letters formed the basis of my own monthly department letter, and served as an accurate record for my employees when I did their performance reviews.

It did however serve a higher purpose. It started to make them think in a disciplined manner which in fact is one of the tenets of a Kaizen. Employees used the structure and metrics of the letters to suggest future Kaizen projects. Soon we had more projects than we could handle and had to prioritize them. This enabled us to have a dialogue on their goals and what they should be doing.

Requiring your employees to develop the discipline of writing a structured monthly letter won’t make you popular. It pays off big time in the long run, and I highly recommend it for it encourages thinking that leads to possible Kaizens.

Parking Spaces can be Kaizened!

On one consulting assignment I had some slack time waiting for some corporate information. I was given a project that no one had volunteered to complete or had the time to complete. I was asked to look at the parking lots and parking spaces in a large integrated plant complex. I was told to see if there was any way to improve the number of parking spaces and/or traf­fic flow. Not knowing a thing about parking spaces or traffic flow didn’t deter me.

I did my As Is process diligently! I got copies of some aerial photos. I quickly counted and confirmed the existing number of spaces. I did the walk the process Kaizen tool and reconfirmed the number of spaces by actually going out and counting them.

The To Be process was a challenge. I received some information on the recommended standard size of parking spaces. I also saw some unexplained dead space in the parking areas and inquired if there was any reason for the dead space such as fire equipment access. Much to my surprise there was not any good reason for the dead space.

In completing the As Is, I was not faced with any real delays but the dead spaces were the waste in the process. I had a small team brainstorm with me and through pure trial and error, reconfigured many parking lots but kept the traffic flow nearly the same. I presented my plan to the plant manager, who was stunned that I had “created” two hundred more parking spaces. He immediately approved the plan.

 We reassigned every-one’s current parking place (they were all reserved) and had a silent auction for all the new spaces, and donated the money to char­ity. Over one long holiday weekend, the old parking lines were erased and the new parking lines created. The employees were ecstatic. Many had previously had to park in park-for-fee lots out­side of the plant complex.

     Again just using a few of the tools of a normal Kaizen we achieved great success.

Purchase Orders Eliminated by Kaizen Tools

I once worked for a company with a seven-part purchase-order form, and every single purchase order had to be approved by the vice president of finance. People were so disheartened by the abysmal speed of the system that maverick ways of purchasing were rampant.

A small purchasing Kaizen team completed seven As Is process maps for each method. It was a very disheartening process fraught with delays and contradictions.

Instead of trying to make the existing processes better, we decided to start from scratch on the To Be process. Fortunately we had plenty of best practices and their process maps available for purchase orders.

 We initially went to a two-part short-order form for everything under $500, and eventually to purchase cards. We eliminated ten file cabinets of forms. People soon had the con­fidence in the systems, and they were much more truthful in expressing their needs. The vice president of finance had more time to get IPO funding and improve our financial viability rather than spending his time deciding who should be purchasing pens and pencils.

Some tools of the Kaizen process eliminated very bureaucratic methods.

Employee Selection Kaizen

When I ran a Human Resources department I was alarmed by the high turnover rate of new employees during the first year of employment. This was not only costly but caused more work in the department. We decided to from a team to look at the current process of employee selection. We had good data on longevity and first year turnover but limited data via exit interviews and other sources. The positions were primarily factory production positions.

The first thing that the Kaizen team did was do an As Is mapping of the current employee selection process. I also decided to extend the ending fence post of the Kaizen and include the first six months of training that the new employees received.  We had very good data on the selection process and we actually went to a team conference room and placed the process on a white board to include all the forms use. The delays in the process were actually minimal. We had scarce data on the voice of the customer so we also spent time asking employees and supervisors what they wanted in a new employee. We also looked at best practices and where we could improve.

When we did the To Be state we made sure that we included turnover as a metric. The Kaizen team came up with a new expanded application, behavior based interviews, testing and reference checking.  The team also instituted some predictability of success testing along with drug testing.  The first time we used the new selection process we had some issues but soon improved upon them.

The results were more than we expected. We reduced turnover by 80% and included current employees in the selection process. We found that they were great sources of feedback on the potential new employees and conducted themselves very professionally.

Streamlining a Backlog of Grievances

          When I took over as a new Employee Relations Manager there was a black log of unanswered grievances of over a thousand. The position had been vacant for over six months and the grievances were not answered. No one had taken the initiative of answering the grievances. The atmosphere in the plant was hostile to say the least.

          The As Is process for answering grievances and the stages was very well documented and clear. Contractually you could not change the process unless the union agreed to the change. So a To Be exercise was out of the question.

          We formed a very small Kaizen team to attempt to deal with the back log. We decided to try to gather voice of the customer data but soon realized that the union just wanted the grievances answered. We then decided to use an affinity type tools often used in understanding the voice of the customer. We started to classify the grievances by type and soon discovered that generally there were only seven categories of types of grievances. With the help of a database we entered all the grievances and sorted them by the agreed to seven affinity types. We then crafted similar but consistent answers to the grievances by type and moved the grievances out of the first step. The database gave us an advantage of answering the grievances consistently and quickly. We also now had a history of our answers for future grievances.

          The union was astounded that we had answered all the grievances although many were not the answers that they wanted; they now had answers that they could show their union members. We also introduced a professional way to track and answer future grievances.

Website Design and Voice of the Customer

A major company that I worked for wanted to redesign their internal website. They assigned their best programmers and some marketing people to design the new website. The programmers insisted on putting all the latest bells and whistles on the website and convinced the project leader that these were necessary upgrades. Unfortunately they did not complete any voice of the customer (VOC) exercises in the design of the website, they did not do any surveys, focus groups or figure out what was critical to the internal customers. They were too enamored with the latest website designs.

The first preview or showing of the new website was a disaster that ended in chaos. The programmers were disheartened and did not know what to do. A senior manager suggested some voice of the customer tools to the team and they quickly started them. Small focus groups yielded the best information. They gradually redesigned the website and incorporated many of the suggestions of the internal customers.  The website was a huge success and many of its principles were reapplied to the company’s external website but now without thoroughly testing the voice of the external customers first.

Warehouse Layout

One of my companies was undergoing a rapid growth spurt. Sales increased 500% in one year. All the internal systems and processes were experiencing severe growing pains. Warehouse space was at a premium for both finished and unfinished product. An internal plant Kaizen team was formed to deal with the need for more space.

Everyone on the team had different ideas for maximizing the square footage of the warehouse but most of it was in a two dimensional mode or length times width of the storage. It was not until an As Is process mapping occurred, and all materials storage practices were examined, that the team considered the height of the storage materials or all three dimensions length, width and height. When we brainstormed this, we soon discovered that we could greatly increase our storage utilization by just safely stacking materials and finished goods higher. We actually did a small model of the To Be warehouse layout to confirm our findings.

This greatly decreased the amount of new warehouse needed to support the sales growth spurt.

One Stop Service Shopping at a University

Ours was a traditional university with most of the offices scattered in the three story administration building. Our student customers spent much lost time trying to find the correct offices for their needs like parking permits, financial aid etc. A small Kaizen team was formed to come up with ideas to alleviate this student confusion.

An As Is process mapping of the current state showed a confusing spaghetti diagram that students had to navigate just to get simple tasks completed. The Kaizen team quickly jumped to a conclusion for the To Be and established a central desk that students could go to first and be directed to the proper place of office. The central stopping point could also answer specific student questions and take care of easy matters.

The university president was still not satisfied with the team’s results. He insisted that each department review their processes for the student and streamline them. Each department did their own As Is to To Be process mapping and many student tasks were redesigned to be done online or remotely. The student traffic in the administration building was reduced by over 50 %.

Digitizing Customer Data

          A large commercial firm realized that its information on specific customers was scattered in different departments and different areas. The CEO insisted that all customer data was to be digitized and a major project began. The team was led by a team leader who was familiar with the Kaizen process and tools. The leader was not content to just do a technical conversion of data to a digital format. He challenged the team to look at each process that gathered information on the customers and or how the customers communicated to the company.

          An As IS process map was done for each process where the customer “touched” the company. Areas such as customer complaints, sales history, returns etc. were meticulously mapped and the delays identified. The team leader insisted that all the processes be streamlined via using Kaizen tools first, and a new To Be was created for all the touch points. The leader also insisted that customer service personnel participate in the process mapping and have access to all the touch points of a particular customer in real time when they contacted customer service.

          When the new digitized data was available and customer service representatives had access to all the data, customer satisfaction surveys showed a very significant increase in customer satisfaction.

Customer-Service Tactics: Walk the Process

      I once headed a walk-in customer-service center at a large US Navy base in Virginia. Often when customers arrived at the cen­ter, they were in various states of panic, looking for parts that they needed immediately either because of a breakdown or because their ship was about to go to sea. I always did my best to get them the parts that they needed and to make sure that these parts arrived at their ship or place of work. Often I just gave the parts to them to hand-carry back to the ship. Sometimes, unfortunately, I could do nothing to help them. Like many people they were procrastinators.

After one hectic weekend filled with nonstop crises, I sat down with my entire customer service crew and brainstormed how to prevent such chaos and last-minute parts pleading. We came up with an aggressive tactic to try to prevent these last-minute emergencies. I set up a schedule where we would go out on the piers and visit ships, introduce ourselves, and go over their requirements with them before they were to go to sea. We decided to walk the process out in the field.

I spent at least two days a week on the pier visiting the ships and talking to the ships’ supply officers. We all got plenty of exercise walking on the concrete piers. Three of my chief petty officers also conducted these visits. As part of the visit, we asked them to rate us, our ser­vice, and to recommend any improvements. We also asked about their problems and concerns. We actually watched them do their ordering and preparations. Based on their input, we adjusted our hours and manning. We constantly sought out our customer’s opinions on what additional parts they thought that we ought to be stocking. We then took their orders right on the ship when we were there and delivered the parts the next day.

After about a month of these tactics, we noticed a consider­able reduction in the number of walk-ins, and a severe reduction in the crisis visits. We then made our ship-visit program permanent.

If you want to improve your customer service, you need to use these same tactics with your customers, both internal and external. You don’t learn much by staying in your own office. Get out there and walk the process! We didn’t just take customer surveys; we made sure we visited them in person on a fre­quent basis. Because of this tactic, we greatly reduced many firefighting adventures, incorpo­rated suggested administrative changes and streamlined their work processes with them. We enjoyed great success in collaboration.

Benchmarking Via the Shopping-Cart or As Is to To Be

Many organizations brag about their benchmarking efforts and how good they are at it. I once worked for a large paper company, and a lot of our spending was for pack­aging materials involved in the making of toilet tissue and paper towels. I was involved in materials management, plant scheduling, and packaging engineering at the time. Fortunately, all the people involved in these operations reported to me. We were also very fortunate that the plant manager had a materials background and was open to suggestions from us. At first, we went out and tried to get information from various paper institutes, but we found this data to be unwieldy, expensive, and not up-to-date.

Then we just decided to use the shopping cart. We went out to various supermarkets and stores and purchased as many of our competitor’s products as we could. We basically dissected them and the materials that they used, looking to see what they had done differently than we had. They were using cheaper mate­rials but had suffered no disconcerting quality drops. Over the years, we had not kept up with the advances in materials. In addi­tion, the process to get new materials approved was unwieldy and required corporate approval. This discouraged almost all the plants from taking risks in the materials area.

In other words the As Is was our materials that we used in our products and the To Be was our competition’s materials that they used in their products.

We put a matrix together of us versus all the competitors and all the materials. We also showed the estimated cost dif­ferential and savings on a one-year basis if we in fact adapted the most cost-effective material of our competitors. We were just striving for our competition’s To Be state! We could not believe the numbers, and we were shaking when we presented the matrix to our plant manager. Lucky for us, he brought it up at a staff meeting, and told all the department heads that they were to cooperate with our materials trials and experiments. He also told us to not ask permission from corporate for the trials and to just do them; sort of a Just Doits type project.  If any flak developed, he would run air cover for us.

I was fortunate to have an extremely enthusiastic people working for me. In addition, we got superb cooperation from our shop-floor staff. They knew our materials inside out. They were all very familiar with the As Is state! People are competitive, and when they heard that our competitors had made it work, their personal pride took over, and they wanted to make it work. It helped when we showed them the competitor’s product and the materials that they were using. Thyme literally tore them apart and examined them. Then they knew that this was not just us making up a plan and trying to achieve some impossible goals. They participated in the brainstorming to get to the To Be.

We assembled a trial plan, started intense packaging-supplier visits, took shop-floor people along with us to talk with our sup­pliers, and asked further advice on changing over to the new materials. Our suppliers were extremely cooperative in making suggestions. Many of them were in the plant on the shop floor when we ran the trials. They could see firsthand any issues we had, and they made suggestions on how we could improve the tests. We were stunned at how rapid and successful the trials were. We knew the brainstorming had paid off.

Many of the materials specifications (As Is) had been in force for years and had not been updated, challenged, or changed. Let me give you an example—one that will make you just shake your head. Many of our corrugated boxes for toilet tissue products were placed in two-, three-, or four-color cases. Our marketing people had free reign to decide how many colors they wanted on their cases. All of the cases had barcodes on them, and when they went by our production counter reader or scanner, the reader counted them as one case.

Obviously, it’s vitally important to have an accurate production count. Unfortunately, the red barcodes were extremely difficult for the reader to read, and often they were skipped or sent to an off-count conveyor. Bottom line, it hurt our production-count accuracy.

We also knew that the only person who usually even saw the case that our prod­uct was in was the stocker in the store—not our final custom­ers. The cases were usually cut up, bundled, and recycled. Our plant manager soon convinced marketing that a one-color black case would be the cheaper, more efficient strategy. We were very lucky to have a plant manager, enthusiastic shop floor personnel and cooperative suppliers who understood materials, and supported our use of Kaizen tools.

In the first year, we saved over $20 million dollars.

HR Website Design

          In a major corporate Human Resources department we were asked to design an employee human resources self-service website for all employees. There were multiple tasks that employees required human resources assistance for from benefits, updating next of kin, pension plans etc. We were determined to look at each of these processes and determine if they could be placed on the website so that the employees could update them on their own without human resource assistance.

          We used a large conference room to do the process mapping of the As Is process for many human resources tasks. We literally papered the walls with the forms required in order to make sure that we all understood all the steps. From employee surveys we knew that employees wanted speed and accuracy of service when updating the tasks. We identify eight tasks that could be easily updated by employees on the new website. We were eager to put these on the website, but I insisted that we do a To Be first for each tasks to make sure that we had simplified them as much as possible.

          Once the To Be was established we constructed a preliminary website but did not roll it out immediately. We ran a pilot or a focus group with about twenty employees with the new website. We were relieved that it was well accepted and the focus group made some more suggestions that simplified each task.

          We then rolled out the website for the entire company. Human Resources departments reported a big drop in employee walk-in traffic. We gradually added more tasks to the site but not without a focus group pilot first.

Transforming Courses Story- Use Boiler Plates

          A very bureaucratic purchasing department wanted to transform themselves into the latest supply management concept. There were over two hundred purchasing professionals throughout the company that needed to be trained in the new strategy and concepts.

          Since training was basically non-existent an As Is process map was not a Kaizen tool option. A team of purchasing department heads decided to meet and try to design a To Be course curriculum for the new strategy and concepts. After many long hours of meeting a consensus could not be reached on many of the courses to offer. Disagreement of certain aspects was strong.

          Luckily I discovered a roadmap of courses that were recommended by the Institute of Supply Management and broke the impasse. We basically boiler plated their courses into our To Be process map.  This is a good tactic to use especially when consensus cannot be reached.

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