Attracting (?!) Customers to an MOT Garage

All MOT garages are required to have a clearly marked area where customers can, if they wish, observe the test being carried out on their vehicle. This photo was taken at a garage in England. Would you like to sit in the chair?

Catch 22 targets - moving goalposts

On the frontispiece to Joseph Heller's Catch 22:

"....Colonel Cathcart, who cares for nothing except keeping in well with his superiors. To do so, he continually increases the quota of missions his men must fly before being sent back home".

Do you know people who achieve, or nearly achieve, the targets set them by management, only to see them increased for the next month, quarter, or year "in the name of continual improvement, and to keep them motivated"?

Just when you think you've "got there"......!

Catch 22 - do people co-operate or do they compete?

I've just started reading Joseph Heller's Catch 22 again. There's an interesting paragraph on the frontispiece:

"From now on I'm thinking only of me".

Major Danby replied indulgently with a superior smile: "But, Yossarian, suppose everyone felt that way?"

"Then", said Yossarian, "I'd certainly be a damned fool to feel any other way, wouldn't I?"

Irish tax on carrier bags has unintended effect

BBC's Countryfile recently featured a piece in which an interviewee claimed that the Irish Government's tax on the use of plastic carrier bags in supermarkets was actually having the opposite effect to that intended.

Meant as an environmental tax to try and reduce the amount of plastic going into landfill through one-time use of carrier bags, the claim was that previously many bags found subsequent use as liners to kitchen waste bins and the like. Apparently the new tax has made this use uneconomic, and so the sales of "pukka" bin liners has increased accordingly.

So a well-meaning intervention has had unintended consequences - a sharp reminder of the need for broad systems thinking in organisations and government.

No wonder the paper keeps falling off

This is an excerpt from a chart of the width of rolls of paper being placed onto printing machines that are producing statements sent to customers.

The supervisor is concerned that variation in the width of the rolls is a cause of breakdown where the paper becomes parted from the tractor reels feeding the paper through.

He has carried out a small experiment measuring at randomised intervals along the roll. The shift in the data is very interesting, and represents different rolls. Not only do the rolls differ in average width, they are nominally supposed to be 440mm wide, so it appears the manufacturing process isn't centred. If this happens regularly, no wonder the paper feed keeps failing,

He resolved to work with the suppliers to reduce the variation between rolls, and therefore reduce the amount of printer downtime.

Confessions of a parking attendant

BBC NEWS Magazine Confessions of a parking attendant: "Right from the classroom, the importance of PAs bringing in high numbers of tickets was stressed. For the new trainees to pass probation, their ticket issuing levels had to be at 1.65 per hour, which is about 10 every day.
I never reached that level and so failed my probation and got a verbal warning. Within the base there were 'leader boards' which listed all the tickets that each PA was getting.
We were divided into teams so if you were bringing back few tickets, like me, you were made to feel bad for letting the team down. Each ticket was �100, so a lot of money is being made by people parking illegally. "

A story of Parking attendants facing pressure to reach arbitrary targets to survive, stress levels ratcheted up with league tables and low wages. They find ways to cheat to give the illusion of achieving more tickets than was actually the case. And what is the purpose of the Parking Attendants? Is it to maximise revenue? Or is it to keep the streets free and flowing? And how does that drive behaviour?

Good control chart - shame about the trend line!

I found this old chart today. It’s a monthly chart of percentage of incidents where a police force has responded to a 999 call within the target time allowed.

The run line tells a story in itself, but the chart is possibly more interesting for its misuse. Note how the person who constructed it has put in upper and lower control limits, but replaced the average line with a line of best fit trend!

Oh dear, oh dear……..

MicroManaging the cups and saucers

Have you noticed how some big organisations micro-manage to an astonishing degree? I heard recently that one such organisation currently experiencing hard times, shedding staff whilst reorganising to “cut costs” couldn’t decide where to relocate the crockery used to serve refreshments in meetings.

In fact the final decision had to be delayed until the Regional Director returned from vacation. This in a company that is struggling to meet productivity targets, where managers report working long hours and weekends, and who are struggling to identify waste and non-value-adding work to eliminate.

Beating the Management system in Star Trek Voyager

In a Star Trek Voyager episode, the Doctor is kidnapped and taken to a facility on an alien planet where he is required to carry out treatment as ordered.

The Top People on the planet get the best treatment and an allocation of sufficient drugs. Lower level people have only a very small allocation and so are generally just left to die.

The Doctor is ethically disgusted. He discovers that, for the top level, the allocation of drugs is based on usage during the previous month. If patients are cured, the allocation of drugs diminishes.

The Doctor discovers that if he lies about his cure rates, his drug allocation remains high, so he can use the surplus to treat the low level patients also.

PRISM Consultancy International : Training and Courses for Process Improvement

Using Control Charts to predict number of potential customers - Part Two

In this control chart, managers are looking at the number of visitors to the show sites who have shown “more than a passing interest” in buying. This is subject to a good counting process with workable operational definitions, of course.

But comparing this chart with the previous Total visitors chart is interesting. The apparent winter/summer split is replicated, as is the special cause signal at Easter, but not so at August Bank Holiday. The summer system is more or less stable, with an average of 56 qualified prospects, varying predictably between 28 and 85.

So only around 1 in 4 of all visitors to show sites look like real potential customers. So is management trying to increase the total number of visitors to site? Or trying to improve the conversion process from what is known in the trade as a “carpet-treader” to genuinely interested prospects? It depends on their knowledge of the local situation, of course, but these are important questions that show that management is looking at the System, and not wasting their energy on the week-to-week vagaries of natural variation.

As a twist to the tale, management had a theory that increased spending on advertising at holiday time merely increased the total number of visitors to site, without a commensurate increase in nett visitors. So the following year, and with not a little trepidation, they did not spend additional money on holiday-time advertising. The result was as expected. The nett visitor numbers behaved exactly as they would have done with the advertising, and the Regional manager had saved £100,000 on the advertising budget which could be spent on other marketing experiments.

Using Control Charts to predict number of potential customers

Here a Region of a national house-building company are using process behaviour charts to understand the pattern of visits by potential customers to show home sites across the area.

Noteworthy are; (i) the two special cause signals of Easter and August Bank Hols; (ii) the apparent split of the pre-Easter/end of Winter period with the more promising spring/summer months; (iii) the otherwise stable pattern of visits with an average of just about 210 people each week, varying predictably between 126 and 293.

Any inclination by managers to get excited/depressed with the ups and downs of the numbers will be completely wasteful – this appears to be the natural variation of whatever system of house-buying is at work. If they want to increase the visitor numbers, they need to work on understanding what they need to do to intervene in this system and create an increase on a sustained basis.

The Chancellor, Gambling, and Systems Thinking

I saw this excerpt in the Guardian in March - sometimes even the Chancellor can see a System at work, and act accordingly so that everybody gains!

"Gordon Brown’s budget initiative to abolish betting taxes for punters has turned out to be a brilliant gamble, the National Audit Office reveals today.

The switch from a betting tax on punters to a tax on the profits of the bookmakers has led the three biggest firms……..to repatriate their offshore operations from places such as Gibraltar back to Britain, creating jobs.

Betting stakes … have quadrupled since the law was changed, and the value of bets has nearly doubled from £27bn to £53bn.

The change means the government gets much less money from individual bets, yet nearly all the revenue is recovered because punters place more of them.

MR BROWN DECIDED TO CHANGE THE SYSTEM after Customs and Excise predicted a huge drop in gambling duties because punters could avoid paying the tax by betting online. All the big operators set up offshore companies to compete with foreign rivals.

The change in the law meant it made no difference to punters where they placed their bets, and this has stemmed Treasury losses. "

Labour doesn't listen to its Customers

Justine Greening - newly elected Tory MP for Putney gives an interesting perspective on Labour and the electorate in a Guardian interview (9th May).

"My economics background tells me that if the Labour Government was a company and ignored its customer, increasing its cost base as much as Labour have, shareholders would sack the directors. If it ignores people and increases their taxes........taxpayers deserve just as much consideration"

The cost and the value of performance data

It certainly costs money to collect data about the performance of your assets and infrastructure. This, of course, should represent an investment, giving insight into what's going on, notice of possible problems ahead, and signals for improvement.

All too often, the accountants see the cost of this, but not the value - and it becomes an easy target for short term cost savings.

"Modern Railways" for May 2005 gives an example. The train company First Great Western is getting very worried about increasing numbers of speed restrictions on the routes they run on. Too much make-do-and-mend by Railtrack has left a huge backlog of work.

Also, the removal by Railtrack of a "proper monitoring system" has led to "regular embankment collapses" which now require massive works to stabilise and rectify.

"A stitch in time saves nine" - but of course you need the data capture facility to know where and when a stitch is necessary.

Newspapers - report elections or sway elections?

"It was the Sun what won it" is an apochryphal newspaper headline from an election gone by. Today's Guardian carries a piece about tactical voting, urging readers to be sceptical about the extent that newspapers can influence their audience.

"Whenever tactical voting is mentioned, someone usually mentions the Observer polls of marginal seats in 1997, which are credited with helping to defeat a string of Conservative MPs, including Michael Portillo.

It was, it claimed, "the Obs what won it". Yet there is almost no evidence that these polls had any influence on the result.

The polls showed the Tories in deep trouble and heading for a string of defeats, and four days later, hey presto, that's what happened.

The Observer observed - it did not influence."

Some might say - the difference between enumerative and analytic studies.

Reportable Accidents and 2005 objective

I came across this data recently, showing for company X monthly number of reportable accidents. The management team have set a challenging target for 30% reduction in 2005.

What do you think are the chances of this being achieved? What meaning does a target of 3.6 accidents per month have anyway?

Inland Revenue Cycle time too long

Wednesday's Guardian "Notes and Queries" has a piece on the Inland Revenue, being a very good example of the benefits that reducing process cycle time could bring to both themselves and their customers.
First of all, the writer is complaining of receiving a demand for underpaid tax of 3p. The accountant's reply is that the Revenue don't actively seek payment of very small amounts - but they do have an automated system which sends out letters without anybody ever doing a sense check.
The other piece of Revenue nonsense is that the accountant routinely has clients' tax returns in by the Jan 31st deadline - they then have to spend the next three months reassuring clients who have received late payment notices. The problem is it takes far too much time for the Revenue to process the documents. This means that any document not processed by the deadline (even if in well before time) will automatically result in a penalty notice being issued.

Lichfield Canal Aqueduct - far-sighted management

Motorists on the M6 Toll Road might be puzzled by this bridge over the motorway that is not connected at either end to anything else! It's a great example of a bit of foresight often lacking in modern society.

The Lichfield and Hatherton Canals Restoration Trust www.lhcrt.org.uk/aqueduct.htm are restoring the Lichfield Canal, but their plans were threatened by the new road.

Some neat planning ahead meant that the bridge was put in place whilst the motorway was being constructed - several years ahead of actual restoration of the canal, but saving vast sums when compared to what the cost might have been when the motorway was open - with all the disruption that would have ensued.

Even the direction of North varies

BBC Midlands Today a few days ago featured a company making compasses. They showed amongst other things a sort of "Calibration Room" - a master compass used to check the accuracy of new compasses being made. It was built exclusively of non-ferrous material and other protective measures designed to exclude local conditions as far as possible from affecting the way the master compass works.

The Master Compass maker said that, despite all this, the measured position of North still varies, even on a daily basis, depending on a range of conditions including temperature and pressure.

There's no true value of anything!

Reduced variation in packing thatching straw

BBC Countryfile on 16th April had a piece about cutting reeds in Norfolk for thatching. After cutting, the reeds would be placed into loose bundles before being manipulated into very tight bunches for tying off and transporting.

The expert demonstrated the process of creating the bunches, and then the BBC presenter had a go. The result was not unpredictable! The expert's bunch was very tight and almost cylindrical - one could have measured the radius of the cross-section and recorded the result. The presenter's bunch was much looser, and it was obvious that the radius of the cross-section was much greater.

So - increased experienced and increased skill produced a result with much less variation. More bunches could be transported for a given cubic capacity of vehicle, and so less waste, reduced cost.

Rover - the data speaks volumes

The Birmingham Post reported on Friday that Sir Digby Jones, Director General of the CBI, made a speech highlighting the following figures;

Nissan in Sunderland makes 300,000 cars each year with 3,000 employees.
Toyota at Burnaston makes 200,000 cars each year with 2,000 employees.
MG Rover was making 150,000 cars with 6,000 employees.

The data speaks.......

Taxation and Systems Thinking!

Taxation comes up often as an issue in the General Election Campaign. Student top up fees and tuition fees, for example. Surely students are destined to earn higher salaries than most once they get good jobs, and so should be expected to pay back at least some of the costs of their education?
Charles Kennedy must be a Systems Thinker, though. He said in an interview; "I am a graduate, and so are the doctors and many of the nurses who looked after my wife when she was giving birth to our new baby. Even if I was a non-graduate, I would be pleased to know that some of my taxes have gone to pay for these people to get the best knowledge and training they can so that they can look after my family and bring my first child safely into the world".
And of course, graduates will pay back more in taxes anyway because they will be more likely to be in the top-rate band of tax.

Another example is the Council tax. Why should I pay (as a child-free person) to educate other people's children? They chose to have them, surely they should pay for the consequence of that decision? Again, this ignores the true value of education. A Systems Thinker would say, yes, but educated people are likely to benefit the economy more, and ultimately pay for the wider range of public services everyone benefits from, including the state pension, for example. And there is much evidence to say that educated people are less likely to commit crime, meaning a safer world for everyone.

Taxation is an issue that can only be sensibly viewed from the perspective of the wider system, and with broad agreement on the Aim of the System.

Six Sigma's too slow!

This is an excerpt from an email I received recently from someone engaged in a Six Sigma project in a large British organisation;

"Six sigma is alive and well - but takes too long. I prefer shorter projects. Our project on xxxxx is a good example. We started it Jan 04 (it's now April 05) - we are in the middle of Improve phase!. As there has been so many changes to the xxxx plan since we started if we fix what was in our original scope we may not see a great improvement as something else now has become broken. And new things can not be added into the project at this stage - they must be treated as a new project entirely. It is not flexible to reflect the changing nature of (our service)

Overcrowded trains at Telford

Do Arriva Trains Wales appreciate the problems they cause when they provided inadequate amounts or types of rolling stock on their trains? On Monday this week, 18th April - the 0825 Shrewsbury-Birmingham, normally a reasonably adequate Class 158 Unit, was formed by a two-car Class 150. These are normally suburban trains, (really the seating is too narrow and uncomfortable even to carry that description) but a whole hour in those cramped uncomfortable seats (not even enough room to turn the page of a newspaper) is really not on.

And at least by joining at Shrewsbury I was able to get a seat - there were a large number of passengers joining at Telford who were forced to stand for the entire journey. Probably the train company response would be "the alternative would be to cancel the train".

But do company bosses get out and about to experience at first hand the consequence of failure to provide?

Hot air dryers and paper towels

Has anyone done a study of the relative usage of paper towels and hot air dryers in hotel and workplace loos? I dislike hot air dryers - they never seem to dry my hands properly, and I much prefer to use paper towels. Where there is only a hot air dryer provided, there always seems to be a sticker saying "This is more hygienic than paper towels, and it reduces the amount of litter caused". Do they really mean "This is cheaper to provide than paper towels, and we don't have to empty the waste bins" - whilst leaving users having to complete the drying process with their pocket handkerchief?

Would a study of relative usage reveal that customers prefer the paper towels?