WK 1 – 06 EXERCISE “7 Forms of Waste”

[Mike Hincks]

For each of the 7 types of waste (pages 43-45 of Lean For Dummies), provide an example you’re your department or group at MasterControl.

Complete this exercise by including your answer in a response to this discussion posting. To do so, just select this note and click on the Reply button, then after typing your response, click Send.

Thanks!

[Ryan]

Transport - driving to the office, uploading install files, downloading customer data(bases).
Waiting - computer boot up time, waiting on customers, waiting on development/qa/other department

Overproduction - doing way more than the customer feels is necessary. it is good to learn but not at the customer's expense.

Defects - as far as TS is concerned this would be misinforming a customer or a co-worker rather than saying "I don't know, let me find out"

Inventory - salesforce is loaded with inventory of information but it is not well organized or easily searchable

Motion - walking to the bathroom and back, hopefully the new building has a better restroom situation.

Excess Processing - Rather than focussing on 1 good source of information and strengthening it we go to all people/departments and waste their time as well as ours seeking information.

[estolberg]

TRANSPORT: non-work from home employees traveling (customer doesn't care where employee is)
WAITING: waiting on customers to start a WebEx, waiting for access to servers
OVERPRODUCTION: showing customer additional features of MC while troubleshooting something else; helpful, but not necessary-- could prevent other crucial calls from not being answered
DEFECT: giving an answer to a customer that doesn't work (either unsure or hasn't been tested) and forcing the caller to log another case
INVENTORY: long training program for new employees not yet on phones ("takes up floor space and other resources" haha)
MOTION: bathroom, smoke breaks, walking to talk to Development/Forms/Pro Services
EXTRA PROCESSING: needing to navigate several pages to find customer's version in SF, new FTP process with sensitive materials (needing a username/pw generated)

[estolberg]

I'd also like to point out there's an 8th type of waste not discussed in the book that sometimes comes up and I feel is important-- Knowledge. It could be defined as not utilizing an individual's full capacity (knowledge, skills, aptitude, and creativity). This is shown in MC via lack of communication between departments, TSEs not writing KB articles to share all the knowledge they have, etc. This could be worked in with Extra Processing depending how you look at it, I guess, but is definitely a waste that needs to be addressed.

[David Healey]

Transport: I agree with Erik and Ryan.  Traveling takes time(for me it takes between 30-50min. depending on traffic), and is less-effective.  A person can get the same thing done at home that they do at work.  All resources are offered via the network.
Waiting: Putting the customer on mute while we pull up WebEx or while we research a configuration problem or a potential bug.
Overproduction: Creating features in the software that are not utilized by the customer. 
Defect:  Bugs in the software.  Opening and closing note taking software and other various web pages. Incorrect answers for customers.
Inventory:  Can't think of anything for Inventory.
Motion:  A fully computer functional computer phone that doesn't require a person to lift the handset off the holder.
Extra Processing:  Putting in the customer's MC version manually into each case.  This should be current automatically. 

[Jared Allen]

Transport - Driving to the office on days you don't need to be there

Waiting - Waiting for webpages to load, waiting for files to copy

Overproduction - Continuing to work past the point of resolution

Defects - Providing inaccurate information to customers

Inventory - If our inventory is knowledge, then it could be better organized and consolidated, which is what we are trying to accomplish with the KB

Motion - Having our department spread out over different areas of the building

Excess Processing - Searching for answers in places where they are not, or are not easily found

[bmiller]

Transport - Re-assigning cases can be a waste because a second tech now has to become familiar with the case spending more time reading and researching what has probably already been done.

Waiting - Waiting on clients, to provide information or test results.

Overproduction - Not just providing too much of what the customer wants, but providing what the customer does not need.  (solutions and information)

Defects - Failing to gather enough information durring a call can lead to more waste by waiting on the customer for more infomation so you can research the problem.

Inventory - old instances of MC is a waste since we have to go back and fix problems we already know exist.

Motion - Sometimes I do pushups in my cubicle, at first glance the book makes this activity sound like waste, however some motion is valuable so the individual can stay exceptional.

Extra Processing - When we have to back up a companies databse before making changes, we loose time waiting for that to complete and could eliminate that step by making it clear that clients should back up their database before calling us.

[ajones]

Transport- not only the travel time to work when things can be done from home, but moving cases between techs, information can be lost in between people and the customer won't get the best result
Waiting- as the book states: waiting in all forms is waste. That means everything from waiting for the laptop to boot up in the morning to leaving the customer on hold to find out information when you could let them get back to work and call them back when you have an answer
Overproduction- recreating bugs that are or should already be in bugzilla but you can't easily find them
Defects- having bugs in the system and not getting them corrected quickly and efficiently
Inventory- we don't have any inventory that I can think of
Motion- having department in other areas of the building and having to take the time to get up and go to that department to talk to someone.
Excess Production- trying to fix a bug that can not be fixed, sometimes it is better to start over and make it right that time

[Chanse]

Transport - Traveling into the office, shipping large DBs by mail, DB and EFP transfers by FTP.

Waiting - Waiting for a bug fix, the time it takes for DBs to copy over FTP, the customer making appointments with their IT staff to get access to a server.

Overproduction - Working on things in the customer's environment that they don't feel is necessary. "Don't fix it if it ain't broke".

Defect - Informing a customer that a patch file you provide them will fix their issue and finding out it doesn't after installation of the file.

Inventory - We have a lot of inventory of solved problems in SF, Bugzilla and the KB. That can create a lot of searching wasting a lot of time.

Motion - Walking to find a developer for help on a bug, searching for person who a customer is requesting, searching for a person to help with an old version of MC that many of us aren't familiar with.

Extra Processing - Restoring a customer's DB in several different locations since we're unaware that others have already retored it for an issue they are working on.

On Friday, August 17, 2012 4:42:52 PM UTC-6, Mike Hincks wrote:

[emcginty]

Transport - Employees commuting contributes to waste by time taken, gas costs, and convenience.
Waiting - Placing the customer on hold or us being placed on hold. Not having the ability to immediately jump onto a server.

Overproduction - Providing what is necessary, not discussing personal matters outside of the required troubleshooting.

Defects - Not obtaining the right amount of information or looking at the wrong system for troubleshooting.

Inventory - Materials/software that is not helpful to our immediate job function

Motion - Having to go somewhere around the office to get an answer on a specific topic

Excess Processing - Resolving an issue after doing a lot of research and work when there was already a fix in place to begin with. 

[Tyler Nelson]

Transport - Shipping documents to customers via fedex, this adds time and complexity where if we did it electronically it would be less costly and faster.

Waiting - this is a big deal to our department as we spend quite a bit of time wasted by customers who are not prepared for their appointments (something that will hopefully be addressed soon in our meeting with project office)

Overproduction - Filling out IQ's where none are needed, or filling out too many pages in IQ's for module installs and the like, we can cut those out and save paper and time.

Defects -  Once again with IQ's reviewing these actively to help catch any errors before sending them out to the customers.

Inventory - If we cut down on our need printing/sending documents we could stock significantly less paper and toner for the printers.

Motion - Walking back to the printer/copier multiple times a day is a waste of motion.

Excess Processing - If we as individual installed will be more attentive in our first time going over documents we can reduce returns and become more lean.

On Friday, August 17, 2012 4:42:52 PM UTC-6, Mike Hincks wrote:

[lgleason]

Transport-Moving executed IQ to shredder.  

Waiting – Waiting for signed pre-approvals, confirmation of appointments, and necessary information for appointment to run smoothly.  

Overproduction – Excessive steps in the IQ that don’t always apply to the appointment.

Defects – The wording in our IQ’s leaves much to be interpreted by our clients and installers. This opens us up for ongoing conversation and opinions on how the document should be executed and interferes with doing things “right the first time”.

Inventory – The storage of executed IQ’s for Hosted clients. It takes up space and other resources to manage and track it and I’m not sure it adds a lot of value to the client.

Motion – Frequent use of the printer/copier/scanner. Scanning executed IQ’s prior to emailing them to clients is a form of waste. If IQ’s were 100% electronic, scanning would be eliminated.

Extra Processing- Maintaining Xcel spreadsheets to manage data that is critical to my position.  SalesForce contains a lot of this information but is challenged in organizing this information

[csimpson]

Transport: Commute, FTP transfer

Waiting: Waiting for deployment to run, waiting for VM to boot. customer waiting for research to be performed

Overproduction: providing too technical knowledge to customer

Defect: providing incorrect information to customer, bugs

Inventory: duplicate sources for same information, multiple logins/sites

Motion:typing comments to customers

Extra processing:Searching through several resources to find data.