Question

Frederick Taylor (1856-1915) is the father of scientific management, a method for analyzing work flows with a specific focus on improving labor productivity. Taylor's methods have had a large influence on the Lean philosophy, particularly standardized work (e.g., standard parts and standard work instructions). Despite Taylor's connection to Lean, he would likely analyze a business process very differently from Taiichi Ohno (1912-1990), the father of Lean thinking and past CEO of Toyota. Consider the following situation. Taylor and Ohno walk down a hospital corridor together and see a nurse chatting with a patient who is waiting for a CT scan. Both would be upset about this “waste,” but for different reasons. Taylor would be upset about the nurse not doing work and Ohno would be upset about the patient not flowing smoothly through the system. Both would see waste, but for Taylor the focus is the worker and for Ohno the focus is the product, or in this case, the patient. In a Lean system, a nurse waiting for the next patient to triage is not a waste, but a patient waiting for triage is. For Taylor, the opposite is true.

Briefly argue in favor of Taylor's perspective or Ohno's perspective.

Answer 1

Ans )

I would go ahead with Ohno's perspective where he is upset about the patient not flowing smoothly through the system. This type of waiting is classified as the Waste of Waiting.

Waiting for information, equipment, materials, or people to receive service. The idle time causes delay in the process. Hence, the accumulation of the delays disable the process from meeting the targeted cycle time

Waiting is one of the seven wastes of lean manufacturing or other service industry(or 7 mudas), it is the act of doing nothing or working slowly whilst waiting for a previous step in the process. How many times have you seen operators stood waiting for a previous operation, a delivery of products to arrive or just slowly working so as not to highlight that they have run out of materials.

Customer Satisfaction is the key to retaining customers and to gaining new ones to grow your business. If you don’t keep your customers happy then how will you ever make your business a success? With a manufacturing company often the only interaction your customer has is with your goods; but if you are a service company then your customers have many more opportunities to find fault with what you are providing them.

From standing in queue for a longtime is not knowing the answer to their query there are an almost infinite list of opportunities for something to go wrong with your customer interactions. Therefore it is vital that you understand how your customer service could fall short of customer expectations.

The following are the seven wastes of service that you should endeavor to avoid at all costs if you want to retain customers and build your business;

Delays in providing the customers with information, product, or a service may be “free” to the supplier, that is until the customer takes their business to another supplier. Delays for the customer can take many forms; from standing in queues to waiting for the service engineer.

Personally this is my most hated waste, I hate being made to queue when I know that when I actually get to be seen my service is only going to take a few minutes. I end up wasting hours of my day stood in queues given the choice of paying a little more to step into an express lane I would pay every time (However an express lane is not the answer – provide the same speedy service to every customer.)

Waiting is one of the seven wastes of lean manufacturing (or 7 mudas), it is the act of doing nothing or working slowly whilst waiting for a previous step in the process. How many times have we seen operators stood waiting for a previous operation, a delivery of products to arrive or just slowly working so as not to highlight that they have run out of materials.

The Costs of the waste of Waiting

You pay for the time spent by all of your employees, time that they do not spend adding value while they are waiting. Waiting is not something that your customer is going to want to pay for, the cost of the time spent waiting will come direct from your profit, for every penny you can save it is a penny put straight back into your profit.
Often the time spent waiting is made up later during overtime at a premium rate, good for your employees but not so good for your profit.

Causes of the Waste of Waiting.

Unbalanced processes are a cause of waiting in your flow, if one process takes longer than the next then the operators will either be stood there idle waiting or they will be performing their tasks at a speed that makes it appear that they have work to complete.
Unreliable processes also cause waiting, the next process either waiting for the previous due to breakdowns, quality issues, information, or for an overlong changeover to be completed.

Information (or lack of it) can also cause waiting, either through unclear or missing information to conduct an operation or even through waiting to know which product is required to be run next.

How to eliminate or reduce Waiting

Balancing of your production processes using Takt time and Yamazumi boards will help ensure that the processes are better matched with regards to cycle times.
Improving machine reliability and quality using Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) and quality tools.

Implement Standard Operating Procedures to ensure that standards and methods are clear.
Use visual methods of planning combined with daily cell meetings to ensure that everyone is clear what is required for the day.

Eliminate the waste of waiting and the other seven wastes to increase Profit.

By eliminating or reducing waiting you will improve the productivity of your workers and reduce your costs, for every dollar that you reduce your costs you will add one to your profit. The same will be true for reducing and eliminating the other seven wastes of lean.