We were at a business meeting and my coworker was waiting impatiently for his laptop computer to finish booting up. He and I were sitting next to each other, had identical machines, but I was already working. He made some comment about my machine booting faster for some reason.
But that wasn’t the case.
Here is his laptop startup sequence:
- Unzip bag, remove computer from bag, set on table: 7 seconds.
- Remove power cord from bag, unwind: 8 seconds.
- Crawl under table to plug in power cord: 14 seconds.
- Re-emerge, connect power cord, connect network cord: 11 seconds.
- Open lid, press start: 3 seconds.
- Wait: 61 seconds.
This seems reasonable, doesn’t it? Why was my setup faster?
- Unzip bag, remove computer from bag, set on table: 7 seconds.
- Open lid, press start: 3 seconds.
- Remove power cord from bag, unwind: 8 seconds.
- Crawl under table to plug in power cord: 14 seconds.
- Re-emerge, connect power cord, connect network cord: 11 seconds.
- Wait: 61 – 33 = 28 seconds.
The core question is “Why can’t I turn on the computer sooner?”
It is a laptop. It will start up just fine on the batteries while I fidget with the power cord. And the networking doesn’t come on line until well into the boot cycle, so no time is lost if the network cable isn’t connected right away.
Net result is my wait time was half of my co-workers even though we both did the same thing. We just did them in a different sequence.
In the terms of a changeover, this is identifying internal tasks that could be external and moving them there.
This is the kind of improvement opportunity your Team Leaders should leaders should learn to spot. In most cases, though, they should not implement a change. Instead they should use the opportunity to teach the Team Member who does the work how to see this opportunity, and teach the Team Member how to make the improvements.
What kind of performance would you have if everyone in your operation thought this way for a year?