Do You Know What Your Customers Value?

Lavon Winkler, Former CEO, FLEXcon, N.A.

There was a time when conducting business at the Registry of Motor Vehicles was something to be avoided. I can remember years ago when renewing my driver’s license for the first time, arriving to find a room with a long counter at the back and multiple clerks behind it. Not one of them was smiling. In front of each clerk was a much longer line of people waiting to transact whatever business they had – heaving heavy sighs of frustration but resigned to the notion that a trip to the RMV = lots of waiting.

I chose what appeared to be the shortest line and awaited my turn. As more and more time passed, I began acting impatiently just like everyone else. After what seemed like days, it got to the point where there was just one person ahead of me. I was next! As I timidly walked up to the clerk and identified the reason for my visit, he handed me a form and, without even looking at me, said “Fill this out and get back in line.” I thought, “You’re kidding, right?” He wasn’t kidding.

I filled out my form and got back in line, this time waiting for a clerk who looked a bit less grumpy, hoping he’d be friendlier. No such luck. He grabbed my form, hastily typed some information into the computer, and directed me to yet another line to have my photo taken. **sigh** After two plus hours of waiting for a transaction that took roughly 10 minutes of actual time to complete, I finally left the registry with a temporary license and the photo from my old license stapled to the corner. I’m sure many of you can relate. Fortunately, the registry has made improvements over the years. They looked at things from their customers’ perspective and found ways to make the process quicker. How? They examined all the steps in the process and identified the waste. The result? Clerks were able to service many more customers per hour. In addition, the crotchety attitudes of the workers disappeared because all concerned were happier.

Something of value to a customer is defined as what they’re willing to pay for. It’s up to you to determine what those things are. Once you do, and you can scrutinize each step in your process through that lens, you may be surprised at the amount of waste that actually exists in your systems.

– Lavon Winkler, Former CEO of FLEXcon North America

Waste in the system

How often do you evaluate your systems for efficiency and effectiveness? Ideally, you have an ongoing exercise of repeated analysis – something in the center of your radar screen that causes you to constantly look for a better way of working to eliminate steps that take time but don’t add value. In other words, waste. Typically, we think of waste as the stuff that winds up in the trash or the recycle bin, but if your team is spending time and resources to perform parts of a process that offer no value to either your external customer or the many internal customers involved, then it’s waste and should be minimized or eliminated if possible. Some examples are overproduction, waiting, unnecessary motion, excess inventory, etc. In fact, according to Jeffrey Liker, author of The Toyota Way, most business processes are 90% waste and only 10% value-added work, so reviewing and streamlining systems on a regular basis, and continually working to eliminate waste, can have a significant positive impact.

So, what do your customers value?

Something of value to a customer is defined as what they’re willing to pay for. Likely, it’s things such as products that meet their specifications and on-time delivery. It’s up to you to determine what those things are. Once you do, and you can scrutinize each step in your process through that lens, you may be surprised at the amount of waste that actually exists in your systems. Naturally, there will be some steps that don’t add value for your customer but are essential to delivering the product, but for the steps that add no value whatsoever, finding a way to lose them could significantly improve throughput, order accuracy, and a host of other metrics. An added benefit will be less frustration among your workforce because they will be able to focus on getting things done rather than wasting time with steps that they know aren’t benefitting anyone. Your approach to eliminating waste could take many forms, from evaluating certain types of processes to focusing on one particular area of your business that may be struggling. As you make improvements, you may expand to cross-functional processes that impact multiple functions downstream. However you go about it, eliminating nonvalue-added steps from your processes can help you to level loads and enable your team to focus on work that your customers truly value. This, in turn, will directly impact your bottom line in a positive way.

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