Lean Thinking

Lean Thinking

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  • Ralf Lippold
    Ralf Lippold    Premium Member   Group moderator
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    Muda in administrative processes - a known problem for every traveller
    Hello everybody,

    it is interesting to see that the main focus of Lean Thinking still lies more or less on the manufacturing side economically relevant processes. There one has something that can be felt (less material, less inventory, quicker handling through different process steps, OEE, etc.) and this makes everything visible and physically alive.

    Service processes on the other hand are flashy -once given they are gone and forgotten (not for the customer though)- and difficult to put into numbers (especially focusing on profit and similar measures).

    But aren't production processes influenced a great deal by the administrative processes that mostly come along with the physical movement? Production planning is an adminstrative process, done by people with support of IT systems mostly, different parties of the value stream are involved and still it is difficult to grasp the benefits of a change towards lean.

    Why is that?

    A good example gives Dan Jones in the essential book "Lean Thinking - Banish waste and create wealth in your corporation" as he goes with his family from his home in Herefordshire to Crete.

    The following "process" steps had to be undergone:

    1. Call the travel company to make the booking
    2. Receive the tickets by mail
    3. Call the taxi company to make the booking
    4. Wait for the taxi
    5. Load the luggage (8:00 A.M. GMT)
    6. Drive to the airport (three and a quarter hour; comment: must be one around London), arriving two hours before the scheduled flight time as required by the airline
    7. Unload luggage
    8. Wait in the currency exchange queue (to change English pounds into Euros)
    9. Wait in check-in line
    10. Wait in security line
    11. Wait in customs line
    12. Wait in the departure line
    13. Wait in the boarding line
    14. Wait in the airplane (two-hour air-traffic delay)
    15. Taxi to the runway
    16. Fly to Crete (three hours)
    17. Wait in the airplane (taxi and de-boarding)
    18. Wait in the baggage-claim line
    19. Wait in the immigration line
    20. Wait in the customs line
    21. Load luggage onto the bus
    22. Wait in the bus
    23. Travel by bus to villa (almost forty-five minutes)
    24. Unload luggage and carry to villa
    25. Wait to check in at the villa (9 P.M. GMT)

    The box score:

    Total travel time: 13 hours
    Time actually going somewhere: 7 hours (54 percent of total)
    Queuing and wait time: 6 hours
    Number of lines: 10
    Number of times luggage was picked up and put down: 7
    Number of inspections (all asking the same questions): 8
    Total processing steps: 25

    (quoted from "Lean Thinking", pages 33-34

    As we can all sense there is lots of muda (and mura and muri as well) in this value stream. The main reason is the existence of too many firms that are involved in the processes and only do the tasks for that they are appropriately speciialized (no or almost none communication or inter-process connections).

    Every partner in the process maximizes its own goals (seems familar, or?) and the overall outcome (for the customer) doesn't become better through this acting.

    Additionally this ends up in muri (overburden) at the airports where everybody is showing up just about two and half hours before the flights (with all the necessary inspections, check-ins, etc.). In order to handle this the airport needs more handling space gates, seating areas, boarding isles, etc. (muda, meaning waste, as passangers waiting are kind of WIP).

    ....and on and on and on it goes:-(

    Doing a value stream mapping!

    Great, but not very easily done through mere writing;-(

    So what else comes into mind? (everybody knows what is going one through personal experience, some more some less)

    Ideas that come into mind would be:

    1. Through ordering the ticket automatically getting a taxi drive (at the reasonable time, as taxis are ordered on regular basis prices could set making the taxi drive more attractive to customers, reducing traffic as several customers could be bundled going to the airport from similar locations)

    2. Combining different inspections into one single-point of checking

    3. Install a passanger boarding pull-system (not like everybody is chasing for his/her seat even though its fixed - doesn't apply to low-budget airlines really at the moment)

    4. Connection (electronically) of the different travel partners (taxi, airport, airline, bus) in order to get information in a timely fashion through (pre-information - reminds me of the beergame, where there is not information at the brewery what the customer is really ordering).

    Of course there many more things that could be streamlined and it would be interesting to see how the lean travel process could look like in the future. Perhaps the process towards that visionary stage brings some insights and new ideas on how to get change done in a small part of the system in order to change the system as a whole (Paul Levy, CEO of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, has told a similar story about the processes in the hospital, that could be changed as soon as the benefits for everybody in the process could be seen by the people involved in the processes).

    That's become a rather long post (I really appreciate your patience at this point, as this long writing seems like muda, but this shouldn't be the case for coming thinking, discussion and solution alternatives).

    Best regards

    Ralf

    PS.: Not to forget through the eliminating of waste in the process this opens up new capacities for handling even fresh travellers who didn't really like the hasle in the present rising profits in the end!
    • 21 Dec 2007, 9:26 pm