Employees on the third floor were not happy, especially in the early morning. The coffee kettles, two for regular and one for decaf, in the breakroom were always empty! It’s almost unacceptable for an anxious coffee drinker to wait even five minutes for a freshly brewed cup in the morning. Even worse was that there are others waiting in line in front of you so you might even need to wait for the next kettle to brew. So, people are cranky, unhappy, and even cursing because coffee was not available when people needed it. Time is money, but without coffee in the morning, work won’t be efficient!
It’s totally a supply chain breakdown issue, so a few Six Sigma Black Belts set out on a mission to fix it. The new process is focused on regular coffee because there is much less demand for decaf. Many sigma tools can be applied in this analysis, such as normality analysis of waiting time per person, fishbone analysis, Pareto, regression and correlation analysis between waiting time vs. office hours. A typical six formula can be developed such as Y(coffee waiting time)=Xs of (number of kettles, office hours, number of coffee addicts, coffee grounds and filter availability, etc. )
According to the rumor, there were quite a lot of hours involved with group brainstorm and heated discussion among Black Belts. A rather complicated new coffee making process, which is like the two-bin system of supply chain management, was produced. The company generously paid for a big desktop mat with nicely printed color coded flow and process. Below is my simplified version to illustrate the idea.
The mat was placed in front of the coffee kettles so it’s very eye catching for everyone serving coffee. The kettles were also relabeled with clear signs of “regular” vs. “decaf”. People were laughing at the change. Many felt it’s a waste of resources in designing the process and printing the mat, but people started to follow the process flow. You know what? The fresh coffee availability was much more improved! The chances of being out of coffee in the early morning were decreased dramatically. Whoever craved coffee in the early morning could now be blissfully caffeinated. Yes, there were still times of process breakdown when a few were not following the process to make a new kettle when the first one was empty, or coffee availability tends to be lower in the afternoon. But overall, the situation is getting better and employees on the third floor were happier. The company was happier too, by investing a little bit of printing cost, the total office productivity improved!
It’s a coffee making process implementation in the office breakroom, but it reflects some supply chain, LEAN and business process improvement disciplines and practices:
- When a two-bin replenish system is implemented, the re-ordering process, when and how, is the key to maintaining high stock availability.
- Obvious signs, colors or labels are always useful in LEAN implementation.
- When a change is implemented, it’s not always welcomed at the beginning. Change management may be necessary in many cases.
- Any process improvement opportunity should be encouraged. It might be a small improvement but result in a huge increase of customer satisfaction.
- I think the Human Factor is the most import learning from the office coffee making process. Human factor is the most critical X in Y, no matter if the Y is fresh coffee waiting-time in the office, or products availability for our consumers. A well-designed process can be easily broken because of human manipulation and interruption. The coffee making process relies on many individual coffee drinkers to brew coffee when the first one is empty. Like any processes in the real business world, the expected outcome of a well-designed process relies on many individual employees consistently following instructions. For many manual processes, training and retraining are always required for process enforcement in order to achieve the same standard outcome. Cross-functional communications are always critical to make sure information flows properly and that following the steps can be executed in a timely manner. On the other hand, employees are those who will develop continuous improvement opportunities to streamline processes to achieve better result with a shorter lead-time.
OK, enough learning from this office coffee process. Now it’s time for me to make a coffee for myself at home. Waiting time: 2 minutes.
true, change is often feared until it is proven effective. if your management team isn’t on board, that’s the sign of a closed mind and that person probably needs to be replaced.