Lean Solutions

How Companies and Customers Can Create Value and Wealth Together

Daniel T. Jones, James P. Womack

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780743276030
• eBook ISBN: 9781471111013
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

A massive disconnect exists today between consumers and providers. As consumers, we have a greater selection of higher quality goods and services to choose from, yet our experience of obtaining and using these items is more frustrating than ever. At the same time, companies find themselves with declining customer loyalty, greater challenges in fulfilling orders, and a general sense of dissatisfaction in connecting with their customers. In LEAN SOLUTIONS, lean production experts Womack and Jones show consumers and companies alike how they can align their goals to achieve greater value with less waste.

Chapter 1

Learning to See Consumption

“Let’s take a walk.” This has been our standard response for many years when an organization asks us to talk about lean thinking. The firm’s managers usually want to meet in the conference room or the CEO’s office. But we know from long experience that value is only created on the gemba—the Japanese word for the place in the office or factory where the real work is done. So that’s always the place we insist on starting, to learn what the true situation is.

Consumers have a gemba, too. It’s the path they follow to solve their problems. And most managers seem to have a very hard time seeing it, even when they follow the path themselves, once they take off their provider hats and put on their consumer hats. So, in recent years, we’ve spent a lot of time walking the consumer gemba, dragging along managers whenever we can.

Our objective is simple: We aim to teach managers to see all of the steps a consumer must perform to research, obtain, install, integrate, maintain, repair, upgrade, and recycle the goods and services needed to solve their problem. We then challenge each step, asking why it’s necessary at all and why it often can’t be performed properly. Once worthless steps are eliminated, we can talk about flow and pull, heading toward perfection.

To make this method clear, let’s take a walk right now, putting ourselves in the position of a consumer. Let’s experience a simple car repair, following the path of Bob Scott, a prototypical consumer whom we first encountered in Lean Thinking when he bent the rear bumper of his pickup.

Walking the Consumer Gemba

This time the process started when the mysterious “check engine” light began glowing on the instrument panel, and Bob needed to search for a repair outlet. The choices were the new car dealer he felt victimized by the last time he needed service, other dealers within driving range who sell and service the same type of vehicle, and several local garages, which may or may not have the latest equipment and knowledge about the specific vehicle.

After several phone calls describing the problem and inquiring about the likely cost, Bob decided to go to a new car dealer he had not visited previously.

The next step was to schedule an appointment—the equivalent action to placing an order in the case of a product, for example, Dan’s computer. Bob then took the car to the dealer at the appointed time.

At the dealer, the problem needed describing. Because Bob was a stranger, the dealer knew nothing about the history of the vehicle and no information had been collected prior to his arrival. This circumstance required a wait in a queue at the service desk to fill out and sign the appropriate forms.

The vehicle couldn’t be fixed immediately, and Bob needed to get to work, so a “loaner” car was provided. This caused another wait while the replacement vehicle was transferred from its storage area. Fortunately, the actual commuting time was no longer than Bob’s normal commute, although in many cases it would be.

During the day, the dealer’s service department made the dreaded call to Bob to describe the problems found and to reveal the cost of the repair. Later, Bob received a second call sharing the bad news that the vehicle would not be ready until the next day because of a lack of parts. As we will see, this is a typical experience when the consumer and the provider are strangers who fail to discuss the nature of the problem up front or share any data on the product’s “as is” condition. As a result, parts have to be ordered and shop time can’t be scheduled accurately.

The next evening, Bob returned to the dealer to pick up the vehicle. This required a short wait in line to fill out the paperwork—reviewing the statement, providing the credit card, collecting the keys. After paying, he encountered a second wait, while the vehicle was brought around from the remote parking area used to store vehicles once repaired.

With the addition of the trip home—counting only the travel time in addition to the daily commute time necessitated by the need to get the car serviced—the consumption process was seemingly complete. However, on the drive home the problem recurred. The mysterious “check engine” light that instigated the initial service went on again.

This is actually a common outcome, as documented by the International Car Distribution Programme (ICDP).¹ The chances in North America and Europe of getting a vehicle fixed right the first time are only about 80 percent. And the chances of getting it fixed right the first time and on time are only about 60 percent.

Because the dealer had failed to fix the problem but the repair had already been paid for, the search process moving forward was very simple. Bob made another appointment at the same dealer, the vehicle was returned to go through the check-in and checkout steps, and—two times lucky—the car actually worked properly.

On the next page we have listed the steps that Bob needed to take to complete what appeared to him to be a simple act of consumption. None of the 16 steps was by their nature complex, and each took only a small amount of time. However, when they are added up, the magnitude of effort and time required is striking. Bob expended three hours and 30 minutes of his own time to solve his problem.

Drawing a Consumption Map²

Step lists of the type we have just created can be constructed for any consumption process. They are designed to help managers learn to see the process and its implications. However, we find that many managers and employees are more visual than verbal, so we also draw simple consumption maps to show a process at a glance.

In the consumption time map (The Long and Winding Repair Path) depicted on page 24, we’ve arranged the steps involved from upper left to lower right to illustrate the flow of the process from start to finish, with a back-flow loop of Step 10 through Step 16. We h...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Also by James P. Womack and Daniel T. Jones
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication page
• Contents
• Half-title page
• Preface
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Learning to See Consumption
• Chapter 2 Learning to See Provision
• Chapter 3 Solve My Problem Completely
• Chapter 4 Don’t Waste My Time
• Chapter 5 Get Me Exactly What I Want
• Chapter 6 Provide Value Where I Want
• Chapter 7 Solve My Problem When I Want
• Chapter 8 The Challenge of Lean Provision: The Role of the Manager
• Chapter 9 Get Me the Solution I Really Want: The Role for the Lean Entrepreneur
• Chapter 10 Solve My Complete Problem Permanently
• Conclusion
• Acknowledgments
• Lean Global Network
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Authors