Waiting
In most processes the work spends far longer sitting still than being worked on. Cutting the waits is usually the cheapest win.
About 4 minutes to read.
Key idea
Follow a single item through almost any office process and you will notice something odd. The actual work, the minutes when someone reads, checks, decides or types, is a thin slice of the total. The rest is waiting: in an inbox, in a queue, in a tray marked For signature, in a system status called Pending.
The time a customer experiences is the lead time, from the moment they ask to the moment they receive. The time anyone actually spends on the item is the touch time. When touch time is a quarter of an hour and lead time is nineteen days, working faster at the desk changes almost nothing. Shortening the queues changes everything.
Example: supplier invoices
Nineteen days for a quarter of an hour of work
An accounts payable team receives a supplier invoice. Someone matches it to the purchase order in ten minutes. It then waits four days for the budget holder, who approves it in two minutes when they finally open the email. It waits again for the weekly payment run, where releasing it takes a few more minutes.
Add it up and the invoice takes nineteen days, of which about a quarter of an hour is work. The supplier, who chases on day twenty, sees a slow, unreliable customer. The team sees a busy week. A daily approval slot and a reminder on day two would do more than any amount of faster typing.
Warning signs
- Status fields such as Pending, On hold or Awaiting approval hold most of the items.
- Work arrives in batches, a weekly run or a Monday meeting, and waits for the next one.
- People apologise for delays they cannot explain.