Santa's Process Dilemma

Urgent E-Mail from Santa
At James Shirley Management Consultants we received this urgent e-mail from ccringle@northpole.net:

"Dear Dr. Shirley:
Our old processes that we used for years are not working! Elves are running in all directions, working as hard as they can, but no presents are moving to my sleigh. We have production bottlenecks in bikes, dolls and children's books. Our Tulsa toy line has slowed to a crawl. Please send process consultants FAST…we only have a few more days. "

The urgency of the message, along with the North Pole address, caught our attention. We immediately headed for the North Pole to see if we could help.

Long Hours and Low Output Per Elf
When we arrived, we saw elves working long hours, scurrying and shouting with extensive bottlenecks in workflow. One of the lead elves, a chap named Sparky, summed it up this way: "Communication is a major problem around here. The Good Girl and Good Boy lists never get to me on time. Raw materials get stuck in another department, and there are errors in every elf production line, especially the Tulsa Toy line. Sometimes I notice that elf over there, Juno, duplicating the same work I'm doing. It feels like we're working longer and harder but we're wasting time! We have to have better processes if we're going to make it for Christmas, nobody knows where to start." When we saw the tears in his eyes and the defeated look on his face, what else could we do but jump in.

The Four-M Method of Process Improvement
We introduced Santa and Sparky to our James Shirley Management Consultants Four-M Method of Process Improvement.

• Map: We mapped out elves' activities, developing flow charts for each production line to show input, output and process steps.
• Measure: We measured productivity for each elf process and identified bottlenecks.
• Modify: We modified elf processes making them effective and efficient so toy production cycles could finish faster.
• Monitor: We put in place tracking to monitor toy output, quality and elf productivity.

Success by December 24th
By quickly implementing the Four-M method, we saw the Tulsa production line and the other toy-making processes move back on track. Presents were flying to the sleigh at record speed with each production line reaching new output goals. To say Santa was happy is an understatement…over and over we heard "Ho Ho Ho!!"