Does it Make Sense on Paper?

One of my main Crap Detector tools is to ask, "Does this even  make sense on paper?" I mean honestly! Could this or that ever work? Often the answer is no.

I went to visit a university in Pennsylvania in the middle of January. No surprise, it snowed. No surprise, I wore a warm winter coat to the campus. No surprise, at one point I had to use the bathroom. No surprise, I wanted to take my coat off. So, where do I hang it? Nowhere! No coat hooks in the stalls. No hooks in the bathroom, No hooks in the hallways or in the classrooms. No cloak room to leave my coat. No lockers available. So, where does my coat go? Thrown over the stall door or dumped on the floor. These are not great choices for an adult.

Do you think any of the student's wore coats to class?

Things like that make me wonder what goes on in people's heads. Doesn't this bug anyone else who goes to that school? Have none of the maintenance guys ever used the bathroom? No. Wait! THEY have lockers, with coat hooks. They don't notice the problem, because they don't have a problem. Neither do the professors. They have offices. They have actual closets with hangars. They don't have a problem. On the other hand, they have 2,500 students throwing their coats on the floor in the bathroom. Does that make any sense? Is that a good thing?

So, if you look at the situation, it clearly doesn't work on paper. They have potentially 2,500 unhappy customers, and the problem remains completely invisible to the people who could solve it. Almost worse, getting this problem fixed at a university would almost take an Act of Congress. It would take months, if it could be done at all. That bugs me. If I had been a student there, I would have bought a couple of coat hooks and hung them up when no one was looking. Done!

It does get me thinking about this question: "How can we see, what our customer's see?" Think about that the next time you sit down for a cup of hot coffee on a cold day.

Lean or JDI?

Sometimes, people think of Lean Manufacturing as being very complicated. It doesn't have to be. There's a wonderful Lean technique, it is so simple that it's really advanced; it's called JDI or Just Do It. Here is an example.

I live in the country and ride a 920 pound Gold Wing motorcycle. I noticed it was getting harder and harder to pull out of my carport and get my bike turned around in my backyard. When I actually stopped and looked at the problem, it was easy to see that over time, my nice little path had become covered with huge hickory nuts and assorted stones, sticks and roots.

The solution? Just rake the darned crap out of the way and be done with it. Just Do It! Five minutes later, I was done. My solution took no money and hardly any time or effort. Now, my morning commute is not just more comfortable, it is also easier on my tires, shocks and springs and much safer.

A quick look revealed the problem. No wonder I was having a hard time.

My Just Do It solution? Rake the darned rocks and nuts into the woods. JDI!