How Long Does It Really Take?
With the advent of situations like fast food, over night delivery, and instant access to our bank accounts on line, we are getting used to things happening fast. But in the day to day real work place things often don’t happen all that fast.
I have been working with a number of libraries over the last few years. They have processes just like any other business, and they generally need to be improved. One example of a library process is the one that takes the book, CD, or DVD that is delivered to the library from the supplier and then processes the material – receiving it, cataloging it in the computer system, and getting it ready to be placed on the library shelf.
How long do you think this generally takes? One library took 30 days on average to accomplish this “dock to shelf” process for each item. And this is not the longest time that I have encountered. Over considerable time (several years) and with serious effort, the library staff members were very happy when they got the average down to 8 days. This is certainly is a significant improvement. Their customers were very happy to get the latest best sellers faster.
The only problem is that some of their competitors, like local book stores and Amazon.com can make the same material available in about 2 – 3 days. After they looked at their process, they realized that the actual value added work involved in doing this process for each item takes only 5 – 10 minutes. They realized they still have a significant room for improvement.
Another example that I have encountered involves getting plans for roads and bridges developed and approved. From the time commitment is given to develop plans until the plans are ready to hand off to the contractor to begin the build, it is not uncommon for four years to pass. Put another way, that is approximately1400 days. How many actual work days do you think are required to develop and get approval for the plans? Well it depends on who all you count in the process and of course the nature of the project. But actual work time is generally some where in the range of 60 man-days.
So where does all the rest of the time go? Much of it involves getting approvals, communicating, waiting on someone’s desk, getting lost, getting cooperation from utilities and railroads, changes, being transported from one office to another, etc., not the real work of designing and drawing of the plans.
A laboratory that tests soils for farmers used to take an average of a week, and as much as six weeks in peak season, to take the soil samples from time of delivery by the courier through the analytical process to the point of putting the laboratory results in the mail. Then one day the lab manager had an epiphany and realized that it took the same time to do the soil test today as it would if it were done a week later. Their process was just set up to stretch it out over a week.
With that realization, the laboratory manager and employees set out to improve their turn around time. Their first realization was that drying the samples was the major bottle neck slowing down the process. After installing dryers and streamlining their processes, what used to take a week is now done in less than 24 hours. And the results are actually sent directly to the patron’s computer via the internet and not by snail mail.
The point of these examples is that if we are going to be successful in today’s world, we need to concentrate on:
I challenge you to study the processes you work in. Take a look at how long it takes to do the process from beginning to end. Then look at how much of that time is devoted to real value adding work on the tasks in the process. My guess is that you will be surprised.