Continuous Improvement...what does it look like?

Having been interested and involved in continuous improvement for some time now, I have the feeling that the perception of some is that results should always be highly visible, and often have big numbers attached to them.

As part of streamlining our systems at John Moncrieff Ltd we have devolved many of the daily shipping processes, both outbound and inbound to the warehouse team. They have excellent knowledge of how the diverse products we supply are packaged, and how many of our trade customers operate. This change saved time by removing the unneccesary process of relaying shipping info back and forward between the warehouse team to the customer/supplier through our main office team. The lads in the warehouse are more than capable and it only had positive impacts on both teams. Last week I went down to the warehouse to find Davie the senior member of the team hyperventilating. He was in a panic as the values on an Air Way Bill he had received looked to be much greater than he had expected. His take was "I've cost the business a lot of money"...my take was "go back and ask the question". It turned out he had misinterpreted the figure which was in Chinese Yuan as being U.S. dollars. Panic Over.

A couple of days later Davie asked me to review a suggestion he had for improving the processing of purchase orders by simply inputting data into a different field, this then made it much more visible to the warehouse team. Brilliant suggestion, offered up to the whole team for review and feedback. It was a no brainer and was implemented immediately. This minor change (which has become known as "Davie's four click improvement") really opened my eyes to the progress we have made. The lads in the warehouse team are now constantly reviewing stock locations, ensuring best value from carriers, and are clearly now looking at daily processes with a view to improvement.

So despite all of the major physical changes we have made to infrastructure, I.T. and processes, Davie's four click improvement has given me the biggest buzz.

Why? because it highlighted that he is now in an improvement frame of mind and leading the team toward a similar mindset.

Improvement like this is almost invisible but ultimately invaluable!

Well done Davie!!