Multiply Productivity With Kaizen Subtraction
Regular small improvements compound over time
Welcome back to our continuing discussion about improving operations by applying Kaizen principles.
A key component of Kaizen is managing steps. Steps in a process, as well as actual footsteps employees, take. Today is about footsteps. It’s sometimes easier to change those than to remove steps in a process.
A great way to see those footsteps is to tape a run of white butcher paper on a wall and mark all the workstations. (don’t get hung up on scale) Work with the team to map their actual daily travels around their workspace. It doesn’t take long for problems and solutions to become self-evident.
Do it in the workspace you are focused on.
Before and after maps are quite powerful.
Berkshire Hathaway isn’t the only one that can benefit from the magic of compounding. In this case, it’s compounding simple improvements by repeating them time and time again.
(You will find detail on the math at the bottom of this post.)
Real-life examples that were so simple they almost seem silly:
We moved a trash can 10 feet. It was moved to a space between stations from across a room. 20 Feet per employee trip, about 6 seconds.
Here is where the magic of compounding comes in:
These were busy stations, multiply the savings by 200 times per day.
That comes to about 20 minutes per day saved.
Multiply that by 260 workdays a year. (generally more in retail)
You get over 85 hours per year.
That one move essentially added two more employee weeks of available labor.
Employees didn’t work harder, they were able to get a little more done in the time available each day.
Adding rollers between stations. The old process included moving goods between stations by hand, often with carts. With the rollers, they were just pushed to the next station.
The total distance was about 40 feet, plus the effort to stack goods onto and off of a cart. We calculated a conservative 1 minute per trip. Interestingly, the numbers end up similar to the first example.
X 20 times per day|20 minutes per day|260 workdays a year|over 85 hours per year|two more employee weeks.
In this case, the rollers were an additional one-time expense.
A hidden multiplier: Before the rollers, there was a “feast and famine” supply of goods at receiving stations. Consistent flow also improved productivity. We never calculated that, I believe improved flow doubled the footsteps estimate. So we ended up adding 4 employee weeks.
Adding a rubber band shelf. In thrift, donated shoes and other loose items have to be rubber-banded as soon as they come in to keep them together. A busy donation store goes through a lot of rubber bands a day.
Donation attendants in a particularly busy store were regularly going to the supply closet for more. So we dedicated a shelf in their workspace with room for over a day’s worth of rubber bands.
X 5 times per day|10 minutes per day|260 workdays a year|over 40 hours per year|one more employee week.
This one has a massive multiplier. Once shoes are separated they tend to stay that way. Single shoes represent a very direct loss of revenue. In a busy thrift store, it can add up to hundreds if not thousands of dollars a month.
This also improved donor services as the attendants were more consistently at their stations.
A little sidebar: We also gave donation attendants vests with pockets. They kept rubber bands in them as well as donation receipts saving even more steps.
More price guns. We added separate price guns for cents, dollars, and ten dollars or more. This isn’t footsteps but had a similar result. Anyone that’s run a good old fashion pricing gun understands the time it takes to reset between denominations. Setting them up this way only one wheel generally had to be turned.
We priced at least 1,000 items a day in the test store. Even a 2-second saving added up to a half-hour a day. At 100 pieces per hour of production, we added 50 more items to the sales floor each day, directly impacting sales.
Basic work equipment can help or hurt productivity. Be it pallet jacks, pens, price guns, or whatever. Scarcity may save on supply expenses but costs every day in lost productivity.
Take-Aways
All of these little improvements were invisible until we stepped back and looked, challenged habits, and asked questions.
Asking why helps surface opportunities. It might not take 5 whys to figure out where a trash can belongs. Some improvements require deeper dives.
Actively involving the people doing the work will create the best results. They usually know the answers, you just have to get them genuinely involved.
Regular small improvements compound over time.
Math:
For this exercise, I used .6 seconds per footstep and about 2 feet in travel per step. I know this is back of the napkin math as there is a huge variation between people. If you want to track your improvements, stick to consistent measuring systems. (source below)
How Long Does it Take to Walk a Mile?
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