How can you use that fact to help you identify the deficiencies in our work systems? These are the work interrupters that hurt productivity, cycle time, quality, safety and costs. 

First, an easy example.  Each of us has picked a weed from our lawn. We can identify the weed because our brain recognizes an exception to the lawn grass pattern – the weed looks different from the expected pattern.

We train our brain to recognize patterns such as 2,4,6,8, 10. Through frequent repetition, our brain predicts what number should appear next.  If we see instead 2,4,6,8, 9 – we recognize an exception to the pattern.

We can apply this to observing our processes for errors or exceptions to the pattern we expect or desire. Let’s look at the movement of material through a warehouse, staff carrying out the steps of an assembly process, staff performing a quality lab test or a physician performing a procedure.  These processes are repeated over and over and often the repeated process includes inefficiencies that have become baked in as part of the accepted pattern in our brain. In order to identify the inefficiencies or exceptions built into the process we are observing, we must go to the work area and observe carefully in detail every step.  At each step we look for exceptions to the expected pattern.  What we will see as exceptions are the interruptions to the work flow.  These are well known delays such as waiting, repeating a step that was done incorrectly, movement because parts or materials were not at the exact location needed for the next step.   If you watch one item being processed, whether a part or a document, every time it stops in the process – that is an exception to the expected pattern. The part may be waiting on a conveyor for the previous part to process or a document may sit on someone’s desk while they go on vacation.

Train your team to understand what a smooth work flow looks like so that we can see examples of motion, waiting and defect wastes. These are the exceptions to the pattern we expect of a smooth work flow and we can eliminate them. The process developed by RapidLeanCoach.com is called “Observe Analyze Improve”. The last team I worked with eliminated 50,000 annual labor hours of unneeded work effort with this process. 

We can help you too. Just contact Steve at Rapid Lean Coach