RahulGarg

Standard or Standardized work is one of the fundamental disciplines of Toyota Production System (TPS) and Lean Manufacturing. As once said by Godfather of Lean, Taiichi Ohno, “Where there is no standard, there can be no kaizen or lean." Standard Work is defined as the best known and demonstrated method to produce a product or a service. The objective is to clearly communicate to the operator / person exactly how the job should be performed and aims at to reduce the variation in the process. Standard work is one the key element of success in Lean Manufacturing. Some of the ways to achieve the Standardized work are : i) Work Instructions and SOPs ii) 8 Step Process iii) Visuals iv) One Point Lesson Standard work lays down the foundation of process improvement and it sets the right base to start for any kind of improvement you are looking out in the process. Depiction of it is illustrated in below image : Elements of Standardized Work : 1. Takt Time : Takt time is the rate at which you need to complete a product to meet customer demand. Takt time is like a sell rate and can be treated as heartbeat of your process. It helps in optimizing the capacity in most appropriate way. For example, if you receive a new product order for your store every 30 mins, then you need to finish the previous order in 30 mins or less to meet the demand. (Origin of Word Takt : This term originates from German word “takt”, means a beat or a pulse.) Mathematically, Takt Time = Total Available Production or Processing Time / Average Customer Demand or Volumes 2. Work Sequence : This is the exact sequence of steps taken to complete the work and we can relate it to SOPs or Standard Work Charts that we follow in our day to day processes to ensure output is consistent across. 3. Standard Inventory : This is the amount of in-process inventory that should be present at the workstation, including inventory mounted on machines. This is one of the control that helps to coordinate between all operators and machines involved in the work and limits the over production. Here we shall keep in mind that ultimate aim in lean is to reduce or minimize the inventory as this is one of the waste. Here key message to be understood is that Standardized (Standard) work is not the static kind of document or way of working however this concept helps the process to improve over a period of time by keeping in center the above 3 elements. Ultimately, Standard Work concept aims to improve the takt time and reducing inventory over a period of time and documentation (Work Sequence) can be updated in line to process as and when there is any change in the process steps. Practically, I can relate this to process where we implemented the RPA (Robotic Process Automation) last year. This was an account opening process and high level Steps of the process are : i) Receive the account opening form ii) Enter the customer details into the system iii) Open the account iv) Send a confirmation mail to customer once account is opened v) Update the system accordingly and close the request Challenge in Process : Due to seasonality involved and high fluctuations in the process volumes, there was often challenges in the process to meet the capacity related requirement since there was need of quick onboarding and offboarding of the resources and this was also having an adverse impact on the quality as well as time to onboard was very low (7-14 days). So finally we decided to implement the RPA to cater the problem of high volumes, low quality and high number of resource requirement. End Result : Post implementation of RPA, Processing time was reduced by 90% and only exceptions were handled manually. Post implementation of RPA, process documents was updated accordingly and agreed with client. If we see above scenario, though earlier process (Pre RPA Implementation) was having documentation (Work Sequence) in place, however to address the key process challenges, RPA was implemented and which helped in improvement in in Takt time which led to very low inventory (In process or pending items) and Updated documentation due to change in way of working post RPA implementation.

Service Recovery Paradox is a situation or a phenomenon where in a customer thinks more highly about a company after the company has corrected a problem with their service in comparison to how they would regard a company if non faulty service had been provided at first place.This paradox occurs specifically when a company corrects service issue in an efficient manner, demonstrating respect and consideration for the customer and his or her needs. Relevance and Linkage : We all know that crises occur, no matter the extent of the company’s contingency plans are. However, customer satisfaction to a large extent depends upon any brand’s ability to recover efficiently with grace, and invoke the service recovery paradox. Just as we admire and sympathize with the player who gets injured during a cricket match but at last score good runs and make the team win, we look for similar qualities in our brands too. Enduring at the crisis or difficult time is what builds loyalty and gives the relationship a substance and longevity. With the right plan in place, including empowered employees, straightforward communication and immediate responses, even the worst service failures can be transformed into a very positive Customer Experience. Example of Service Recovery Paradox, I have noticed personally are : i) Customer become even more loyal with a taxi provider company if the company turns the bad experience faced by customer say music system was not working during a trip into a positive experience by giving next ride as free or making that bad experience ride as a free or a discounted ride. ii) At a retail chain, a customer had a bad experience during Billing process as there was big queue and it took a long time to reach the billing personnel however at last company turned that experience to good one by offering a freebie to customer. So they not only retained the customer but also made him / her more loyal and associated with them. To conclude, we shall not think so much if something has happened bad erroneously but learn a lesson out of it and try to correct or improve it as soon as possible. As its rightly said that Problems are Opportunities.

The noise factors are the design or process parameters those are difficult or expensive to control and affect the output of variable of key interest negatively. On the other hand control factors are controllable factors and can be controlled by the person doing the process or experiment. For example : i) Say a farmer wants to grow the wheat, then the seed quality, time of sowing the seeds etc. are control factors and can be controlled by the farmer; however on the other hand outside temprature, humidity etc. are the noise factors which are difficult or expensive to control. ii) On the production floor, say itensity of the light impacts the productivity of the worker; then light intensity can be treated as the noise factor. How to overcome the effects of noise factors ? Effects of the noise factors can be reduced / eliminated by Blocking. We can divide the total population into homogenous groups called blocks. The logic behind making the blocks is the variation due to noise factors is less between the blocks and effect of the treatment is more clearly evident while we do the blocking. E.g. Say we want to calculate the productivity of the team and we think that shift timing is one of the noise factor that imapcts the team's productivity; so then we can calculate the team's productivity shift wise and address the problem effectively if it lies in a particular shift only. Compounding noise factors is also a strategy in which you group the noise factor levels into different combinations that you anticipate will result into the extreme response values. Because estimating the effects of individual noise factors is not the primary goal, compounding is a useful method to reduce the amount of testing. For example, if you have three noise factors, each factor with the two levels, you will have eight different combinations of settings to test. Instead, you may group noise factors into two overall settings – one setting in which the noise factors levels increase the response value and the other one in which the noise factors levels decrease the response value.