Win and Keep Customers

More and more, Customers want to know that the providers of their goods and services are doing something to clean up the mess. What mess? Our increasingly unhealthy air, food, and water. An ever-growing amount of waste and landfills. A squandering of natural resources.

For years in production environments, I would hear people talk about the high cost of labor. As a process improvement practitioner, I learned quickly that the right people are not the problem. Wasted time, materials, and action are the culprits and stopping waste is one way to win and keep Customers. 

WASTED TIME

If your highly skilled technician had to walk across a building the size of a city block to get a tool or use the restroom, you paid for those minutes and pay for them again and again. And you pay for it with multiple employees. How would the cost of a second tool or a half bath on the other side of the building compare to the manhours lost each year? Improving procedures for a semiconductor company, I had to gown up and degown to ask anyone in the cleanroom a question because they were not allowed to use the phone. With travel time and required cautions, it could take a half hour to get an answer to a question.

WASTED MATERIALS

One fellow who had been out for a while after surgery was upset about the amount of scrap metal that had piled up while he was absent. He complained, “I’m going to have to pay for several loads to the dump.” That was the way they’d always done things. When I said that you don’t pay someone to haul scrap metal to the dump, you sell it, he was surprised. One of the biggest problems for landfills is industrial food waste. An entrepreneur made a deal with an all-you-can-eat buffet and a corporate cafeteria to pick up a significant and specific portion of the leftover food each day. Her dog biscuit company is thriving, and her client’s waste pickup costs are reduced.

WASTED ACTIONS

This made me think about an old story. A man walked into the kitchen while his wife was preparing dinner. She dropped a ham out of a can and cut off both ends, tossing them in a bag of scraps for the dog. “Why do you cut the ends off the ham?” he asked. “That’s the way my mother always did it.” He asked his mother-in-law the same question and got the same answer. Thank goodness Grandma was still around because, when he asked her the question, she said, “I had to because my pan wasn’t long enough.” Businesses are loaded with unnecessary steps. Consider the idea of packaging an orange in plastic. It has already packaged itself.

SO, NOW WHAT?

When you end waste, boast about it. Put up a sign that shows how much you reduced your use of water in your processing or how much less energy you have used since last year’s totals. What parts of your operation could be improved in ways that would make Customers want to buy from you? What might get their attention? What might keep them coming back?

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