At the September 24 Union County Chamber of Commerce’s Legislative Breakfast, State Representative David Burke emphasized the importance of process improvement to Ohio’s manufacturing competitiveness. 

Burke talked about reducing waste and improving flow to reduce manufacturing costs.  He described his experience touring area manufacturing plants and learning how they’re striving to cut costs by eliminating unnecessary process steps and reducing inventory levels.  We were delighted to hear our representative  promoting Lean as a priority! 

At the breakfast we also heard from State Senator Karen Gilmore and a representative from US Senator Mary Jo Kilroy’s office.  Health Care Reform and Cap and Trade were the more controversial federal legislative initiatives that were discussed.  They are controversial, in part, because of the increased burden they will place on business if passed.  In the case of Cap and Trade, the bill disproportionately affects the State of Ohio because of our manufacturing-based economy.  

To keep jobs here in Ohio, it is critical that our businesses take steps to compete with world-wide challengers.  The US Congress has a host of bills moving through the legislative process that, if passed, will further challenge our manufacturing companies with increased taxes and regulations.  If your company has not yet taken action to address internal waste and inefficiency, I hope you’re beginning to feel the urgency.  The challenges we currently face will pale in comparison to those that await us if these anti-business laws are enacted.

Traditional cost-control efforts such as limiting paper and office supply use are worthwhile, of course, but they don’t begin to address the deep-seeded wasteful activities that have become standard practice in many of our businesses.  As a business community, it’s time to proactively address our opportunities to improve.  We can’t afford to wait any longer.

Today I learned to be a race timer.  On August 1, I’m helping with a 5K to benefit the Union County Humane Society.  So today I helped out at another local 5K to learn the ropes.  The guys from the Columbus Running Company are awesome – so willing to help organizations doing fundraising races – and very gracious to let me tag along with them.

Helping with the race today made me think about measurements.  The runners, both experienced and novice had a time they were working toward achieving.  They had a goal.  They had a way to measure their progress.  They assessed their performance along the race course and adjusted.   If you’re a runner, about now you’re saying “duh”.  Why would it be any other way?  That’s the challenge of running….setting goals and working to achieve them.

What is really amazing is that many businesses have measurement systems in place that don’t give the people running the race the information they need to adjust their performance mid-race.  They get financial results long after the end of the month.  And that’s all they measure.  Everything they know about their performance is from the past – like driving while looking in the rear-view mirror. 

Let’s go back the running analogy.  How do you know what to measure when running?  To run a 5K in less than 30 minutes, you need to run a 10-minute mile.  While training, on a treadmill or on the road, you must know how long you have run and how far you have gone.  Knowing this allows you to measure your progress, pushing a little harder until your goal is achieved.  So you need to measure distance and time and have a system in place to do so.  I know – “duh”.

So what’s your long-term goal?  How can that be measured?  What short-term measurements will help you know how you’re doing and adjust your approach?  In business these short-term measurements are called Key Process Indicators or Process Metrics.  Every process owner needs some.  Get yours today and watch how much easier it is to win your race.

This week Rob and I went to Orlando to a WCBF Lean Six Sigma conference.  We heard some great speakers, met some cool people and had the opportunity to hang out with one of our Green Belts from ECOT in Columbus, who presented her team’s project on a story board.  (Good job Brittny!)The subject of this BLOG is not the great stuff we learned from other practitioners, but observations we made while leaving Orlando.  Picture 5:30 AM on a Friday at the Orlando International Airport.  The shops are still closed and the open security lanes are limited.  From observing the schedule of operations, you’d think that very few flights would be departing before 7:00 AM.  Instead, when you try to book flights out of Orlando, there’s very little that departs in the evening and the bulk of flights leave in the early morning through early afternoon.  That would account for the lines.Not only were the lines long, but it seemed that the TSA staff was surprised by it.  OK - it could have been that we were there on the only Friday when lines are long at 5:30 AM, but do you really think so?  The Orlando airport uses the new security lane designations, a lane for Casual Travelers, a separate lane for Frequent Travelers and a special Expert Traveler lane.  At 5:30 AM everyone was being funneled through the same lane.  Then the TSA began opening lanes about 6:00 AM (no doubt when the morning shift started).  Because of the long lines, there was no effort made to use the special lane designations, it was merely an exercise in crowd control.  Like 4-H’ers directing their swine around the show ring, we were steered in groups to the next lane to be opened, then the next.  All special routing was abandoned in favor of spreading the herd out as quickly as possible.So, would I do anything differently?  Have the years of Lean and Six Sigma training paid off?  Here are the questions I would like to ask the TSA management:  How do you schedule your TSA agents?  Is it the same every day, or does it vary by volume of flights?  What procedures are used to start the day?  What passenger behaviors would you like to encourage / discourage?  How does your current system support the desired behaviors?How about measurement systems?  How do you measure your performance?  What characteristics does a “good” start-up have that a “bad” one does not?  How would you qualify last Friday morning - was that a “good” day?I guess the most frustrating thing about being herded in the lines was the apparent lack of  a system to accommodate traveler volume at the beginning of the day.  I suspect that TSA agent shifts are scheduled for convenience of management rather than to match customer travel patterns.  I also imagined arriving at the security lanes at 7:00 or 7:30 when the lanes are switching over to the special queues by traveler type.  How would you like to be the last family moving through the expert traveler lane being glared at by business people with laptop in hand and loafers neatly tucked in the gray bin?  (Or in our case being the traveler waiting for the mom with several children.)  Really - we’re nice people and we love kids - but there are some loafer-sliding expert travelers out there who aren’t so nice.Remind me to take a stop watch next time I go to the airport.  I think a little queuing simulation is in order!  And how great would it be to make the TSA agents wonder what I was up to???