Waste

I've been spending more and more of my time recently looking at reducing process waste.

Once you begin looking for waste, you begin to see it everywhere.

It's like buying a new car. You only notice how many other people are driving YOUR model after you've taken delivery!

In my search for waste (process improvement) I'm involved in departmental projects throughout the company. And I've discovered that my I.T. department is not immune.

If I could magically undo some of our previous practices, I'd start by reducing the I.T. peripheral "clutter".

No more dual monitors.
No more personal printers.
No more PC speakers.
Fewer docking stations.
No more projectors.

We've all heard the arguments FOR all this stuff. I need dual monitors for productivity enhancement. Really? How many more sales will you be delivering if I get you that second monitor? Will you be completing projects faster? How much faster? Will you communicate better? How will we measure this?

Once the first dual monitor shows up, its not productivity that spawns the next one and the next one. It's generally a status issue.

The same holds for personal printers. While everyone knows that printers are idle 99% of the time, it seems like everyone has to have one sitting on their desk. God forbid we should have to walk 30 feet to a high speed network printer!

Consider the walk a printing deterrent. Consider it part of the company health plan.

Sometimes the argument is that we need a personal printer for "sensitive" documents.

Print sensitive documents? As soon as a document is printed, you've virtually given up all security control, unless you immediately shred it or lock it away somewhere. Printing is about the LEAST secure activity you can do. Better to leave the document hidden or password protected on the network than to print it! And think of the waste!

1. Unique printer cartridges require you to keep a wide variety in stock or risk continually ordering unique replacements.
2. It means having to "learn" the quirks of several dozen printer types.
3. It means supplying paper. Filing paper. Shredding paper. Discarding paper. Waste. Waste. Waste.
4. Filing storage (cabinets, floor space, key control, archiving process, off site storage, archival rotation and destruction).

And don't get me started on PC speakers.

There are few things more annoying than listening to a cubemate's latest YouTube selection. These days we can all purchase headphones for less money and greater privacy!

Docking stations do serve a useful purpose - if the laptop travels frequently. But in many cases, docking stations are installed in case a person has to travel. A quick walk around our facility at the end of a workday will demonstrate the point. Laptops sitting in docking stations. Or docking stations allocated to people who seldom travel. And in our company if you have a personal PC at home, you don't need to take your laptop from work to get secure access to your business files.

I'm not immune to wasteful practices. We recently had a projector bulb fail. If you've ever had to replace one, you know they can be expensive - around $350. And they never seem to last as long as the manufacturer says they should. One of my guys asked me to consider a large flat screen TV/monitor. I prefer the resolution better. They install neatly on a wall and they have a longer life than projectors seem to. Larger up front investment (maybe) but better value over the life of the device.

I used to work for a manager who could tell how efficiently a company was run by the cleanliness and organisation of the warehouse. A neat and quiet warehouse indicated to him, that operations were well organized and efficient.

I take the same measure by walking around the office area and counting PC and network peripherals.

(Full disclosure: I may be a freak of nature. My desk is completely empty except for one small pile of papers (mostly handwritten notes to myself) and my laptop.

No docking station. No additional monitor. No personal printer. No in/out box).

It wasn't always that way for me. In previous positions I was comforted by the piles of paper, the unread industry magazines, the overflowing in box. It wasn't necessary. it was just a habit.

It's amazing how execution can improve when you strip away the "peripheral creature comforts".

And you'll enjoy the cost savings too.

Lean I.T. is Waaaay Overdue

Try as I might, I can't find a really good example of an organization devoted to Lean I.T. - that is; a company who continuously drives out waste from its I.T. processes.

Jeffrey K. Liker, author of The Toyota Way, has spent decades studying Toyota, who happen to be the most efficient manufacturing company on the planet. It's Toyota's passion to identify and remove "mudo" (waste) from all of their processes.

They describe waste as:

1. overproduction
2. waiting
3. unnecessary transport
4. overprocessing
5. excess inventory
6. unnecessary movement
7. defects
8. unused employee creativity

None of these activities add value, (as defined as something a customer would be willing to pay for) so when stripped away, the idea is to leave behind a process that ONLY adds value.

While America has embraced the notion of Lean Manufacturing (to varying degrees of success), I haven't found a great example of how lean principles are being used within I.T.

Consider the massive amounts of administration and management that go into every large I.T. project; the documentation, the approvals and sign offs, the numerous team meetings to "get everyone on the same page", the status reporting, document filing, retrieval etc.

Even the physical organization of the project should be scrutinized - are all the team players together in the same place or are they dispersed across several sites or across the organization?

Have you ever done post project forensics on your PM processes to determine which activities add REAL value? If you had to defend all the documentation you currently complete to your peers in other departments, could you do it? - even down to every box on every form?

I ask the question, because after Sarbanes-Oxley, it seems to me that the knee-jerk reaction is to document the heck out of every project, (regardless of risk) and whether or not the documentation adds any value.

And I think our I.T. processes have suffered as a result.

I have actually come across examples where for some small I.T. projects, managing the project is 80% of the work and the actual activities DOING the project (designing, coding, testing, implementing) amount to only 20%.

Houston we have a problem.

If you haven't looked at your I.T. processes in awhile, I'd recommend bringing in a "Lean Expert" to help you Value Stream Map your processes. VSM is a process whereby you actually, map, step by step, in intricate detail, how you believe a process works. The VSM process identifies "waste" wherever it appears within the process. At the end of the exercise, your team will be able to quantify how efficient your process is. Don't be surprized if you find that actual Value Added work is only a fraction (usually less than 5%) of the total elapsed process time.

Then, you observe the ACTUAL process to see how it works in "real life" and document it again.

Finally, your team identifies ways to cut out the waste. The results can be stunning.

I once worked for a company where VSM was done on an estimating process. The estimating process took about a week from the time we received a customer quote request to the time they had a formal quote back in their hands. After a VSM exercise, our improvement team found that over 70% of the quotes they received could be completed within 20 minutes. The actual value added work, in a process that took a week, was only 20 minutes! The rest was "waste".

Is lean I.T. long overdue at your company?