Lean Halloween

While checking Halloween candy I noticed that a small process was automatically created.  It was fascinating how many real world examples crept into this small five minute activity.  I have tried to highlight lean concepts such as ‘waiting’ with single quotes.

Here are the details:

Two kids, each with different size bags of different types of candy.

Specific checking rules (requirement tests):   No open packages, no gum, no tampering, no unrecognized candies, no unpackaged items.

Stage 1: Starting process:

Taking turns, candy was passed for me to run through my tests.  I would then hand it back to them if approved, otherwise it was put into the pile of doom (to be transferred to the garbage).

Starting observations:

Both kids had a pile of inventory to be sorted through

I seemed to be a ‘constraint’ (bottleneck) in the process since all the checking had to go through me.

My pile of doom was creating a new approved inventory pile.

Each child had to be trusted to put the approved candy in their new inventory pile.

(Note: Obviously we are not getting rid of all our inventory but Just-In-Time (JIT) delievery is a funny concept for Halloween.   Maybe my kids could visit one house a day for candy instead of all in one night. )

Stage 2: Process starts to evolve

Child 1 begins to presort all the candy (put all smarties boxes together), thinking this will help the process.  Great comparison to individual cells optimizing and not ‘seeing the whole’.  This presorting actually had me ‘waiting’ at times.

Child 2 was forced to ‘wait’ as I went through this large batch of candy instead of ‘one piece flow’.

Stage 3: Process Improvement / guided evolution

I begin dropping Child 1′s approved candy directly into his bag since it was right in front of me.  This removed some ‘waste’ since we reduced ‘movement’ in our process.

The rule of taking turns one at a time was dropped.   While waiting for Child 1 to create batches of candy, Child 2 was bringing one item at a time over and over again.  Since I was available to do more checking.

Stage 4: Process End

Child 2 ran out of candy to check.  His ‘inventory’ was less to begin with but he also seemed to have all his candy checked at a quicker rate by keeping to the process.

Child 1 had all his candy checked.

Pile of doom was moved to the garbage.

Stage 5: Lessons learned

The one candy at a time made sense to check since that was a limitation of the candy checking machine (me).  Presorting candy had no beneficial impact on the process except some entertainment value.  Reducing waste had an impact on the process.  It was difficult to speed up the checking process ‘value added activity’ so there was more benefit in removing waste from the process.

Have a look at repetitive activities that you do in your daily life and see if you can make them ‘leaner’.   I’d love to hear some stories on how others have optimized their everyday activities.