Learning Series 2 : CUSTOMER SERVICE GAP ANALYSIS

Good morning , Suzuki San

Suzuki San turned around and found Miss P standing . "Miss P , what a surprise , how come you are in Lusaka "

Miss P says " Sorry to barge in Suzuki San , I couldn't get through on your phone , I am here to participate for the Annual Kaizen Conference on the 3rd and 4th November . I need to make some intense preparation on our Kaizen activities and have brought all information .  I heard KJ is organising a Learning session on 22nd Oct to explain on the Seven QC tools , and I wanted to attend that as well . I want to know something about Pareto analysis and a few other tools "

"Oh , I see. You are welcome to Lusaka , Miss P . I also heard of the meeting . It is unfortunate that we are not able to have these sessions in the Copperbelt , and I hope , we will start something there soon . By the way , do you know that KJ's second Learning series on Customer Service Gap Analysis was a huge success . The participants very intently learnt about the various service gaps that affect Customer satisfaction and went back with a wealth of knowledge . See these pictures  ,Miss P "

Miss P exclaims , "Wow , Suzuki San I would have loved to participate in these learning series . I also am wondering why so many companies in Lusaka are not able to send their staff for these programs . It would be a great opportunity to understand concepts and then bridge to practice "

Suzuki San sighed " Yes , rightly said , Knowledge will never let one down , It is always positive and we are pushing hard for the Top management of Lusaka Industry to understand that , and develop their staff to learn more and more .  One goodness about all this is that , one need not feel that they have missed out on anything . All that they have to do is to mail KJ to conduct another session , and knowing KJ  he will certainly help out .

Miss P , I am looking at the Kaizen Conference with great enthusiasm  . I really dont know how many of the participants are going to come with presentations that are beyond 5S , but we have to gradually move beyond that and start using the 7QC tools and real projects . "

"Understood , Suzuki San . Thanks for your time , Will update you after attending KJ's learning series on Thursday ."

"Where is it being held , by the way Miss P "

"I think owing to paucity of time to arrange with KIZ , KJ plans to have it in his organisation only , Specialised Systems Limited on Mwembeshi road , Light industrial area . Will you be coming , Suzuki San "

"Let me see , Miss P , I have to check on my diary and will certainly come if time permits. Best wishes "


Note 1 : Suzuki San , Miss P and her company are characters  developed by KJ and has no relevance to any particular person / processes/situation    . All mention are purely for illustration purpose of the central theme of the case and are personal opinions unless cited and shall have no recourse of consequences to author . Readers can use their practical inputs to alter any of the material that may be published . Readers are invited to express their views on this continuing case study series .

Note 2: Some of the readers have mentioned that they are unable to place their comments . Please click on the "No comments"  link , and make your comments and if you do not have any prior registration , you can choose anonymous and feel free to give details or not , though it will be nice if we can have your name details in the comments .

Episode 4 : Suzuki San continues with 5S

"Good afternoon , Suzuki San . I enjoyed the material on 5S that you gave last week . You said that you will give the Red tag format this week " said Miss P with expectations to learn more in her eyes . 

Suzuki San smiled and said , " yes , I thought you will forget . I have asked my friend Mr.KJ to upload it in a drop box so that any one can download the excel sheet on red paper and can use . The link is at the end of the blog page he will publish .

As the name goes , if you are not able to get a red sheet , you can use any color though generally Red color paper is used , so its called as the red tag. Mr.KJ has offered to give a couple of pictures in his organisation where they have red tagged and then taken action .

You can see that the Kaizen team at Specialised Systems  has spared no one , and has red tagged KJ's room as well . That is the beauty of Kaizen power , Miss P , the ability to accept constructive criticism and improve continuously .

Well , having said that , there are a few cardinal rules a Kaizen 5S team must know and follow " paused Suzuki San .

Miss P and her team , very eagerly kept looking at him wondering what he will tell next .

Suzuki San continued

" 1. You must be ruthless in your red tagging activity . Whatever is seen in a place without use for more than say 3 months , must be red tagged . Depending on the purpose , each company is free to decide this duration of non use , though .

2. You will notice that some of the inventory may be lying for years together , every one seeing it every day and doing nothing .

3. There was this company which had a successful red tag session happen , and then removed them due to an audit that was to happen , and again red tagged after the audit . This is not acceptable .

4. Yellow tag mess - A company decided to yellow tag , instead of red tag with the idea of those items as doubtful necessity , and when the exercise was completed , they found that all the items were yellow tagged . Moral is that there is no half way between red tagging and an item being doubtful of use . It should be mercilessly red tagged if not used .

5. Another company did a red tagging exercise and made adhesive red tag stickers at a cost of K 5 per sticker . One of the Kaizen members promptly red tagged the sticker bunch itself . Moral is that you must be very conservative in such a Kaizen exercise .

6.  And last but not the least , my friends DO NOT RED TAG PEOPLE , UNLESS YOU WANT TO BE RED TAGGED YOURSELF "

Every one burst out laughing at this , and Miss P was almost on tears with joy hearing these inputs . " Suzuki San , We cant thank you enough for these valuable inputs . Now I begin to understand , what you meant by being Excellent by doing simple things in practice , WoW , this is great and we cant wait to implement "

Suzuki San said humbly " You are welcome , I am also asking KJ to publish in his blog a presentation that he gave to his staff on these rules of 5S and red tagging . But that will be next week , See you then "

RED TAG SAMPLE LINK AS EXPLAINED BY SUZUKI SAN : 

This will open in a new window when you click Download at the right side top

https://www.dropbox.com/s/w9vrolvpuxznbgy/5S%20Red%20Tag%20template%20SSL.xls?dl=0


The Excel file has 3 red tag cards to fit an A4 sheet, and needs to be cut carefully to create 3 red tags .

Note 1 : The case study is developed by KJ and has no relevance to any particular processes/situation  that may be followed in the concerned industry , All names are fictitious and do not represent any individual or organisation . All mention are purely for illustration purpose of the central theme of the case and are personal opinions unless cited and shall have no recourse of consequences to author . Readers can use their practical inputs to alter any of the material that may be published . Readers are invited to express their views on this continuing case study series .

Note 2: Some of the readers have mentioned that they are unable to place their comments . Please click on the "No comments"  link , and make your comments and if you do not have any prior registration , you can choose anonymous and feel free to give details or not , though it will be nice if we can have your name details in the comments .

A Case of Throughput efficiency

Miss Precious Quality (Miss. PQ) is a Quality manager at one of the big copper ore processing plant in Zambia . She has had no formal qualification in Quality management and has come up in her career by showing interest in these areas , and her boss thought that she would do a better job learning Quality on the job .

Miss PQ had learnt that efficiency is the output over input and had calculated the efficiency for each of the stages of production and had displayed it on the respective notice boards , to the pride of the departmental staff . It showed up something like this .

Incoming Ore purification : 93%

Stage 1 processing : 95%

Stage 2 purification : 97%

Copper ingot facility : 96%

Storage department : 98%

The outputs and inputs comprised of a matrix of variables that related to the function of the department . For example ,  the copper ingot facility had the molten copper poured into ingots for storage and transportation . There were process leakages in terms of how much the ingots were filled and any spillage . There was a variable related to the number of ingots produced in a month compared to a target set . 

The departments were very proud on their achievements of 90+ percentage points of efficiency . One day the CEO Mr. George  of the facility walked into the production floor with a Japanese consultant called Suzuki San . He introduced him to Miss. PQ and explained that the company had become a member of the newly formed Kaizen Club of Zambia and Suzuki San is representing an agency facilitating Kaizen activities in Zambia and was on a visit to the production facility . 

Miss.PQ thought this was one of her best moments in life , and took Suzuki San through the production facility explaining the stages and how best the departments were performing and showed proudly the efficiency calculations of each of the departments . After the tour , the team assembled in their board room for a feedback meeting and were eagerly waiting for Suzuki San to commend on their performance . 

Suzuki San rightly expressed his observations on the enthusiasm of the team and the way they were progressing in their improvement methods . Turning back to Miss PQ he then asked , “Miss Quality , I observe that you are very happy on the efficiency levels of each of the departments “ and Miss PQ responded “ Yeah , Suzuki San I am sure you saw the 90+ efficiency levels “ 

Suzuki San asked her “ Have you calculated your through put efficiency then “ 

Miss PQ  looked confused “ Suzuki San , I have never heard of that , is it not enough if individual departments show their efficiencies , Please explain throughput efficiency “ 

Suzuki San continued “ Miss PQ , Any production process shall have an input and an output and you have done it wisely by calculating the functional efficiencies of each of the stages , however you have to also calculate the throughput efficiency , which gives the overall process efficiency . Now we have your stagewise efficiencies . Throughput efficiency is simply the product of all the efficiencies in stages . So your production process has a throughput efficiency of

Throughput efficiency : 93% x 95% x 97% x 96% x 98%  =  80.62% 

Miss PQ got a shock of her life . “Are we doing so badly , Suzuki San “ . She almost broke down . 

Suzuki San kindly replied , “ No Miss PQ , the concept of Kaizen and Quality management, is that you must never be happy with your present levels of performance , but keep embarking continuously on how to improve your outputs for the same or lower levels of inputs . This is done by using lots of Quality and statistical tools and identify wastage and eliminate variations . Have you heard about Six sigma quality levels and various statistical tools “ 

“ Yes Suzuki San , I have heard of the word Six sigma , but not beyond that , would you be kind enough to tell something about it “ 

“ Yes for sure , but not now, Miss PQ , I will spend an hour with you and your team during my next visit . You can in the meanwhile try to find out more from websites and be aware of these ,OK”

“ Thanks a lot for these inputs , Suzuki San . This has been a good eye opener for us , and we will certainly adopt and learn more of how to continuously improve our process efficiencies and of course the Throughput efficiency “ 

Miss Precious Quality knew now that she was embarking into a new territory that will put her on the Roadmap to Quality movement in Zambia .

Note: The case study was developed by KJ and has no relevance to any particular processes that may be followed in the concerned industry , All names are fictitious and do not represent any individual or organisation . All mention are purely for illustration purpose of the central theme of the case . Readers are invited to express their views on this continuing case study series .