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Issue
47: July 8, 2005
To our readers:
Successful business people recognize the importance of meeting the needs of their customers. The really smart ones understand that defining and meeting customer requirements demands a workplace culture that incorporates constant change, also known as Continuous Process Improvement. Creating a continuous improvement culture requires employee involvement at every level.
Employee involvement programs take diverse forms, ranging from simple suggestion programs, to teams that deal with specific problems for short periods, to groups that meet for more extended periods of time.
The U.S. Department of Labor Commission on the Future of Worker-Management Relations reports employee involvement programs enhance productivity. Thirty-two percent of workers involved in these programs view them as very effective, while 55 percent view them as somewhat effective. Seventy-nine percent report that the programs have given them greater say in their jobs. By a two-to-one majority, employees at workplaces without employee involvement programs say they would like a program of this sort at their workplace. At its best, employee involvement makes industry more productive and improves the working lives of employees.
A GE Capital "improvement team" recommended they send auto leasing customers summary, rather than detailed, reports of monthly usage. Customers supported this. When all the savings from this one solution were totaled - paper, postage, computer time, labor, and customer service time - it amounted to more than $100,000 in annual savings.
National Steel used improvement teams to reduce errors in order shipments by 15% and significantly improve response time to customer complaints.
L.L. Bean employed improvement teams to increase efficiencies in their warehouse operations. The result was a 20% reduction in damaged goods, the implementation of a new warehouse transition system without customer service interruptions, and an increase of .25% in accuracy of warehouse-picking during peak season, to add to their accuracy rate of 99%.
Employees in an involvement culture will continually improve their ways of interacting and of accomplishing work. They will work with their managers to excel at meeting the needs of customers both inside and outside the organization. Their motivation will be self-inspired as they benefit both psychologically and tangibly.
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Pushing problem-solving and decision- making down in the organization allows people who do the work to both measure and take corrective action in order to deliver a product or service that meets the needs of their customer - internal or external.
Take the following four steps and be well on your way to creating a Continuous Process Improvement Culture.
Step One: Identify an area in which you can improve performance.
A good starting point is to focus on an area where you have received complaints.
Ask: What is the performance issue? Have internal, or external, customers complained? Are we missing deadlines? Is quality suffering? Why this issue and not another?
Be sure to support the identified performance gaps with data, not hunches. For example, if you have received complaints from external customers about late deliveries of a product or service, be sure to find out what percentage of all deliveries are late and just how late they are.
Step Two: Write a problem statement that states the specific, measurable effect of the problem.
State the problem objectively without implying a solution or attributing blame. Make sure the statement focuses on the customer's pain. How is the customer affected negatively?
Remember that "a problem well stated is a problem half-solved". (Charles F. Kettering, US electrical engineer & inventor.)
Problem Statement Example: During the month of April, 8.6% of all deliveries to our local customers were late. Local customers represent 94% of our total sales volume. Seventy-three percent of the late deliveries were less than an hour late, but were promised "next day by 10AM". Late 10AM deliveries create anxiety and loss of productivity for our customers and our customer service staff fielding their panicky and angry calls. What can we do to decrease the number of missed 10AM deliveries?
Step Three: Assemble a process improvement team.
Members of the team should be stakeholders in the current process. If the problem is late product delivery, everyone from salesperson to order-taker to picker and packer to dispatcher to delivery driver needs to be involved.
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Everyone who "touches" the product or paperwork associated with it, needs to be available for input. Late 10AM deliveries may go beyond the physical delivery process. Find your star players at each of these positions to serve on the team.
Plan to make a significant investment of time and skilled personnel for this change initiative. Take full advantage of the experience and expertise of your workforce as you seek to find a solution to a problem that affects a significant number of your customers.
Give the team a mission: "Reduce the number of late 10AM deliveries for our local customers."
Step Four: Ask the team to map the current process.
If you become lost on the way to a dinner party and call your host on the phone, the first question you'll be asked is, "Where are you?"
To give the team an idea of how to map the current process, have them first think in general about the processes we use in our daily lives.
A familiar example is the process that takes us from locking our door at home to driving our car out onto the street. We need to walk to the car, unlock and open the door, sit behind the wheel, close the door, fasten the seat belt, open the garage door, start the engine, put the car in gear, press the gas pedal, steer the vehicle out of the garage, apply the brake, close the garage door, change the gear, press the gas, steer the vehicle. Each of these steps makes up the process to achieve the goal of driving our car onto the street.
Before the team can begin to find root causes of late 10AM deliveries, they must first make a list of all the steps in the process. List the people, equipment, and methods involved in each step. What does the current "next day by 10AM" delivery process look like? Who is involved?
Flowcharting is an excellent tool for determining what a process looks like. For help in constructing a flow chart, visit this web site: click here
Get all team members to provide a realistic picture of the process from their point of view. This is not a time to identify and solve problems, rather it is a time to paint a thorough picture of how the current process functions.
Next Month: Part II - Problem-Solving Tools For Your Employees
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