Yesterday I had the opportunity to take several bags of used clothing to a local charity. Many of us (I hope) do this, as often our discarded clothes and other household items are still in fairly good shape and would be a very welcome help to someone who has less. Generally I just hand the bags to someone at the drop-off point, occasionally picking up a receipt that I then misplace, not that I really care about the rather miniscule tax deduction. It’s the action and thought that counts.
However yesterday’s trip ended up a bit differently. This time there was no volunteer standing outside at the drop-off location, so I lugged the bags inside. There I saw… a manufacturing operation.
Not your typical manufacturing operation, but still a process. A series of tables where several people were sorting the incoming clothing and reusable items into piles, then sorting them yet again, and again. The first sort moved clothing to one side and basically anything else to the other. Following the clothing process, the second sort determined if the clothes were clean with the dirty clothes presumably going to a wash process. The clean clothes were then separated by quality, with the best quality clothes designated for local use and decreasing quality going to other organizations and even a container to be shipped overseas. The high quality clothes were then sorted by gender, type, and size. A similar series of sorts occurred for non-clothing items.
Although the operation was busy, the sorts fairly well defined, and the fundamental cause admirable, the lean manufacturing guy in me could find all kinds of low hanging fruit. Sort tables were not very well identified, the physical flow was chaotic and included transportation up and down steps in a converted large house, and some stations and people were idle while others had a large backlog. There were a lot of questions from the workers asking for decisions on what was acceptable, what the next step was, and occasionally a cry for help from someone buried under a backlog.
These operations have several challenges that many manufacturers do not face, at least in the same way. Funds for tables and signs is virtually nonexistent. The quality of the incoming raw material… donations… is inconsistent and somewhat seasonal. And many such operations do an admirable job of trying to employ special needs folks that require additional supervision and training.
Imagine how much better they could be with some help. Some spaghetti flow analysis, value stream mapping, visual factory methods, 5s, standard work, and cellular methods to balance flows and operations.
The manufacturing industry has been good to me, and allows me to be one of the lucky ones that can donate raw material to such an operation instead of being a customer of the final product. I’m always looking for ways to give back, be it this blog, the Superfactory website, speaking at events or directly via financial contributions to charitable organizations. This is yet another way, and later this week I’m going to see if I can help them be more efficient at providing for the needy.
Anyone want to join me?
Mark Graban says
Interesting stuff. I’m sure there is, indeed, waste in the process. How are you going to approach them about this? I volunteered at a food bank once and the waste killed me. I asked about making some changes and was brushed off as being new, so I gave up and didn’t come back. This was many years ago. In hindsight, I wish I had stuck with it and pursued helping them make improvements. It’s important to think about how to ask for permission to help, to not turn people off because you’re criticizing their process.
Ron Pereira says
Good for you Kevin!
I am from the camp that says there are some kinds of continuous improvement activities that are far superior and more important than others.
And the venture you are about to take on ranks at the top of my list.
Larry Van Kuran says
Have been a consultant for over 30 years.
Mostly in hlthcare, including some fairly large production shop operations (in hlthcare).
In my younger days, I was fairly zealous – I tended to apply my experience to just about everything and everywhere with which I came in contact. In that vein, I understand your thoughts when you wrote “…..the lean manufacturing guy in me could find all kinds of low hanging fruit.” Me, too.
However, over time I have also come to modify my ‘zeal,’ as it were, when looking at some operations such as you described in the used/donated clothing example. And here’s the mod: Sometimes, just sometimes, there’s something more to be said for practicality and for ‘effectiveness’ versus ‘efficiency’ in an operation.
Let me explain. As I’m sure you know, ‘effectiveness’ implies things beyond simple ‘efficiency.’ An example here might be one where a system is designed to deliver a product to customer’s homes in the most ‘efficient’ manner possible – electronic ordering, automated processing of that order, automated mailing, etc. And the outcome a cost-effective one, from a dollars and cents and a timeliness perspective. Cheaper production & delivery costs, quicker delivery to the customer, etc.
However, let’s apply that same example to something like grocery shopping or, better still, to providing refill prescriptions to patients. In many cases, we’d want the ‘efficiencies’ as outlined above. However, such an ‘effective’ operation could be considered, at least in part, to have a downside (i.e., to be less ‘effective’).
Let’s expand the grocery/prescription example even further to say that we’re now serving elderly customers who can drive and walk – ambulatory, versus in a rest home – they get around and do things. With the ‘efficient’ production example, the social value has pretty much been removed; dial in the order and it’s automatically delivered.
But what about the fact that many elderly see going to the grocery store or to the pharmacy as one of their social contact events (‘adventures,’ if you will) of the day? That’s lost, so the ‘efficient’ system is not necessarily the most ‘effective’ one from that perspective.
You might want to apply that view to the used/donated clothing operation you witnessed. Questions to ask would include ones like ‘Are the people involved helping as volunteers (or as min. wage staff) and deriving a social payment from that involvement?’ ‘What if it was more ‘efficient’ and needed less volunteers or min. wage staff – would those volunteers/staff displaced have meaningful other involvement, or would they simply go away?’
‘Efficiency’ to save money and time is not always the return of best effect, though I admit it’s attractive & often difficult to avoid. Yet, sometimes, just sometimes, the ‘effective’ solution works best if other issues are involved.
Larry Van Kuran
Encino, CA
Cannon says
That’s a good perspective to consider that is probably a valid point of view for many people who are not familar with a lean concept of process. You hear reactions of a similar vein in traditional manufacturing environments when people seem to enjoy fire fighting all the time. Lean proposes to make things more stable, predictable, and efficent, which doesn’t sound very exciting to a lot of people who are used to stepping it up, coming through in a clutch, putting in the overtime, and doing whatever it takes to boost production.
The challenge you describe of making the clothing sort more efficent would allow the clothing drive to handle more clothing through the elimination of waste that should be conveyed as “allowing everyone to do more good with their volunteered time.” Perhaps a simple metric could help like “sets of clothes/person” could be tracked to show everyone how many more people each volunteer is providing clothes for. If the demand doesn’t exist once capacity has been increased than they can be reallocated to other value adding operations of the charity.
How do most people convey the value of lean to people who love the fire fighting and chaos of traditional process environments? I think it’s best to start with identification of waste leading to a value stream map. Even though they feel productive “hauling x here” and “sorting lots of y” there none of it adds value….
Mike Gardner says
I’m with Larry. My parents volunteer at just this sort of operation and it is definitely one of their social outlets for the week. We should always stop and ask if there is a real need to improve something. Don’t change a process just because you can. Look for something more vital to work on.
Julie says
Great post! I also have ben trying to think off ways that I can use my skills to better our community. I also want to get my children involved at a young age so that when they are older, helping and volunteering is like second nature.
On another note…I had to come up with a list of people to add to a Personal Development Blog list and I added this one. You can read it here: http://www.declutterit.com/priscilla-palmers-personal-development-list Feel free to participate and keep up the great work here! I love coming here.
Kathleen Fasanella says
Kevin, what a wonderful project! Sure, you’ll have some issues being the new guy wanting to fix things but I hope you’ll stick with it.
Selfishly, I’m interested in what your fresh eyes can contribute to our sku challenges…