A certain well known high street bank in South Shields told me yesterday that the earliest they could set up an appointment to open a new Bank Account for my wife was 13 business days away on September 16th.   They claim that their "calendar" is full until then because of the "student season".
This is non-lean customer service on many levels.

I then went to Virgin Money and they were able to give an appointment on September 1st,  only 3 business days away.   Even this 3 day waiting time is more than is acceptable to customers in the age of real-time online services.

The application process only requires the details of the applicant,  proof of ID, and proof of address.
My belief is that Lean process could easily be completed in less than 10 minutes from time of entry to the bank to time of exit.
This would allow for day 4 appointments per hour.

I suspect that the appointment process is documented as being 30 minutes and they do not take more than 1 per hour.  This is information I will find on my next visit.

Neither bank asked the question about how much money we had to deposit or what specific services we needed.

In Lean Six Sigma we call the customer expectations "Voice of the Customer" (VOC) and the specific requirements of the customer the "Critical to Quality requirements" ( CTQs ).

Anyone in the management of these banks should be familiar with these terms.

7 Questions to ask about everything step of your process

The great Jim Womack, author of 'The Machine That Changed the World' and passionate advocate of Lean Thinking gave this sound advice back in 2003.   He eloquently describes the 7 Questions he uses in his Gemba Walks to analyse every step of the process.

His 7 questions are well worth repeating in 2015.  See below.


Jim says...

' When I walk through any value stream – and I walk a lot every year as I visit many companies in many countries -- I ask the following very simple 7 questions about each step:

1. Is the step valuable?  Or would the customer be equally happy with the product if the step could be left out?  If the latter is the case, the step is at best what Toyota would call “incidental work” and what I often call Type One muda.  Get rid of it as soon as you can!

2. Is the step capable?  Can it be conducted with the exact same result every time?  This is the starting point, but never the end point, for Six Sigma.

3. Is the step available?  That is, can it be performed whenever it is needed?  Or is the step subject to breakdowns and varying cycle times so you are never sure what will happen?  This is the starting point, but again not the end point, of Total Productive Maintenance.

4. Is the step adequate?  That is, is there capacity to perform it exactly when the value stream requires it?  Or is there a bottleneck?  Bottleneck analysis is, of course, the starting point of the Theory of Constraints.  Or, and more likely in the current era, is there too much capacity?  Toyota tries to avoid this by adding production capacity in small increments rather than in big hunks, increments that can be flexed by adding or subtracting employees.

5. Is the step flexible?  Can it shift over quickly from making green ones to making red ones quickly?  And can it changeover without compromising capability, availability, and adequacy?  Flexibility is the key to rapid response to changing customer desires while avoiding the inefficient production of big batches.

If all the steps in your value streams are valuable, capable, available, adequate, and flexible, you are well on your way.  What remains is to perfect the linkage between the steps.

6. Does the product flow from one step to the next with no delay?  Henry Ford pioneered with “flow production” in 1914 by moving the Process to the product rather than the reverse.  This is how he created nearly continuous flow not just on the assembly line but also in component fabrication at Highland Park.  Unfortunately, he found flow hard to sustain in a world with changeable demand and wide product variety.  That’s where Toyota came in.

Does the product only flow at the pull of the next downstream step?  This is the central point of JIT, one of the pillars of TPS: Products should only flow at the command of the next step downstream.

7. Is the flow leveled back from the customer to the extent possible, with a standard inventory of finished goods if necessary?  Leveling permits every step in the whole value stream to operate smoothly while still satisfying the customer with exactly what is needed exactly when it is needed.

As I walk through any value stream – and I walk a lot every year as I visit many companies in many countries -- I ask the following very simple questions about each step:

Is the step valuable?  Or would the customer be equally happy with the product if the step could be left out?  If the latter is the case, the step is at best what Toyota would call “incidental work” and what I often call Type One muda.  Get rid of it as soon as you can!

Is the step capable?  Can it be conducted with the exact same result every time?  This is the starting point, but never the end point, for Six Sigma.

Is the step available?  That is, can it be performed whenever it is needed?  Or is the step subject to breakdowns and varying cycle times so you are never sure what will happen?  This is the starting point, but again not the end point, of Total Productive Maintenance.

Is the step adequate?  That is, is there capacity to perform it exactly when the value stream requires it?  Or is there a bottleneck?  Bottleneck analysis is, of course, the starting point of the Theory of Constraints.  Or, and more likely in the current era, is there too much capacity?  Toyota tries to avoid this by adding production capacity in small increments rather than in big hunks, increments that can be flexed by adding or subtracting employees.

Is the step flexible?  Can it shift over quickly from making green ones to making red ones quickly?  And can it changeover without compromising capability, availability, and adequacy?  Flexibility is the key to rapid response to changing customer desires while avoiding the inefficient production of big batches.

If all the steps in your value streams are valuable, capable, available, adequate, and flexible, you are well on your way.  What remains is to perfect the linkage between the steps.

Does the product flow from one step to the next with no delay?  Henry Ford pioneered with “flow production” in 1914 by moving the Process to the product rather than the reverse.  This is how he created nearly continuous flow not just on the assembly line but also in component fabrication at Highland Park.  Unfortunately, he found flow hard to sustain in a world with changeable demand and wide product variety.  That’s where Toyota came in.

Does the product only flow at the pull of the next downstream step?  This is the central point of JIT, one of the pillars of TPS: Products should only flow at the command of the next step downstream.

Is the flow leveled back from the customer to the extent possible, with a standard inventory of finished goods if necessary?  Leveling permits every step in the whole value stream to operate smoothly while still satisfying the customer with exactly what is needed exactly when it is needed.

I respect Kauser Khan for her obvious business skills and determination and wish her and her company Protocol.org.in all the best ( see article below ''She trains for Professional Excellence'' ) it is essentially a 'Finishing School for Executives'...HOWEVER, the hiring and promoting of executives based on their  'executive image', soft skills and political correctness is NOT the correct approach as shown by the world's most successful companies ( Toyota, GE, Apple for example ).  Effective and capable executives need an intimate understanding of the specific business processes in their companies ( the 'gemba' where value is actually created ) and a technical understanding of the inner workings of the business.    Of course executives need the 'soft skills' however this should never be at the expense of true understanding of the processes for which they have ultimate responsibility.   These are the teachings of Eiji Toyoda ( Toyota ), W. Edwards Deming and Joseph Juran ,,,and one of the foundations of 'Lean Management'  promoted today by such organizations as the Lean Enterprise Institute  ( Lean.org ) ...James Womack and co.

Who was the first Lean Six Sigma practitioner in history ?   My vote goes to Adam Smith in 1776.  Adam Smith owned a factory in Scotland that made pins.  He introduced 'Division of Labor' in his pin factory in 1770 and developed a 'work cell' process that involved 10 separate workers in 18 separate activities.
He documented the process flow and recognised the value stream.
He wrote in his book 'The Wealth of Nations'  that 10 workers together using division of labor over the 18 activities could produce over 48,000 pins per day.  However individually one worker working alone on all 18 activities would struggle to produce less than 20 pins per day.

This is documented in his lectures that were the basis of his classic work on ecomomics called 'The Wealth of Nations' which was first published in 1776.      'The Wealth of Nations'  was influential with the founding fathers of the USA, especially Alexander Hamilton.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Wealth-Nations-Adam-Smith/dp/0553585975

Adam Smith was also the first man in history to document the Lean Six Sigma concept of value.
He identified two different kinds of value, "use value" and "exchange value." 

Adam Smith also recognised one of the negative consequences of division of labor - that the workers no longer need to understand the value of the product as a whole and therefore are at risk of becoming detached from the reason for their work and as thinkers and problem solvers.

This indeed is what happened and led to increasing waste and inefficiency in large manufacturing processes such as Henry Ford's production lines, up until the Toyota Production System (TPS) changed the role of the workers to make them also the problem solvers and thinkers.

His influence is well acknowledged by historians and academics.   A picture of Adam Smith and his pin factory is now on every British £20 note !

Read below.  This is taken direct from his 1776 book 'The Wealth on Nations'

To take an example, therefore, from a very trifling manufacture; but one in which the division of labour has been very often taken notice of, the trade of the pin–maker; a workman not educated to this business (which the division of labour has rendered a distinct trade), nor acquainted with the use of the machinery employed in it (to the invention of which the same division of labour has probably given occasion), could scarce, perhaps, with his utmost industry, make one pin in a day, and certainly could not make twenty. But in the way in which this business is now carried on, not only the whole work is a peculiar trade, but it is divided into a number of branches, of which the greater part are likewise peculiar trades. One man draws out the wire, another straights it, a third cuts it, a fourth points it, a fifth grinds it at the top for receiving the head; to make the head requires two or three distinct operations; to put it on, is a peculiar business, to whiten the pins is another; it is even a trade by itself to put them into the paper; and the important business of making a pin is, in this manner, divided into about eighteen distinct operations, which, in some manufactories, are all performed by distinct hands, though in others the same man will sometimes perform two or three of them. I have seen a small manufactory of this kind where ten men only were employed, and where some of them consequently performed two or three distinct operations. But though they were very poor, and therefore but indifferently accommodated with the necessary machinery, they could, when they exerted themselves, make among them about twelve pounds of pins in a day. There are in a pound upwards of four thousand pins of a middling size. Those ten persons, therefore, could make among them upwards of forty–eight thousand pins in a day. Each person, therefore, making a tenth part of forty–eight thousand pins, might be considered as making four thousand eight hundred pins in a day. But if they had all wrought separately and independently, and without any of them having been educated to this peculiar business, they certainly could not each of them have made twenty, perhaps not one pin in a day; that is, certainly, not the two hundred and fortieth, perhaps not the four thousand eight hundredth part of what they are at present capable of performing, in consequence of a proper division and combination of their different operations.

Adam Smith, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. I ed. R. H. Campbell and A. S. Skinner, vol. II of the Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1981). Chapter: [I.i] CHAPTER I: Of the Division of Labour.
Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, edited with an Introduction, Notes, Marginal Summary and an Enlarged Index by Edwin Cannan (London: Methuen, 1904). Vol. 1. Quotation.

I was recently asked about my opinion of a new process improvement concept called 'Customer Experience Management'  or CEM.    This has been promoted in the last couple of years as the next step in the 'evolution' of Business Process Improvement in the light of the rapidly changing way the customers make choices and interact with the providers of products and services.  My view is that of course business process owners need to be intimately connected and in tune with to what the 'Customer Experience'  is for their product or service.  This is emphasized in Lean Six Sigma in the 'Understanding the Voice-of-the-Customer  ( VOC ),  as well as developing the Critical to Quality metrics ( CTQs ) and Specification limits ( USLs and LSLs ) using data collection and data analysis tools such as Focus Groups,  Surveys and Feedback collection methods,  testing for statistical significance (  t-tests, ANOVA, Chi-Squared etc ).    
In summary I think that the term Customer Experience Management ( CEM ) is a good 'catch all' term to describe the methods, tools and techniques we use in Lean Six Sigma for the data collection and data analysis of Customer information in order to understand the VOC and therefore to develop the right products and services with the right features and functionality.

Takt time is a useful metric that many companies could benefit from using.

It is the 'beat' or 'rhythm' that the workers need to work to 

Takt time is the time produce a unit of product or service in order to match the customer demand for the product or service.   

For example if you have 480 shirts to press, and an 8 hour shift ( 480 minutes ), then your Takt Time is 1 minute (  1 minute per shirt ).

• Producing faster than Takt time results in the waste of "overproduction",  or in an unnecessary peaks and troughs in production ( work too fast...then have nothing else to do until the next order comes in )
• Producing slower than Takt time results in the waste of "waiting" by the customer or by the downstream activities in the process and results in lower customer satisfaction.