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Operational excellence in supply chain needs regular Gemba visits.
I had an insightful experience at the airport recently. I went to the outlet of a regular food chain, known for its high quality tea. I was promised service in 5-7 minutes. However, it actually took more than 15 minutes due to many orders queued up for service.
I was curious to know the reason. I stood at the counter where tea was being prepared and was surprised to find what the bottleneck operation was. It was the straining operation to pour tea into the cups. The bottleneck was actually the strainer which got clogged up every time tea was poured. The counter girl said that the strainer was of poor quality which was delaying the entire service. Why can’t we get a better quality strainer which doesn’t get clogged so often?
The chain seemed to be oblivious of the customer pain point and was possibly losing many potential repeat customers.
A single Gemba visit could have brought the bottleneck out in the open and it could have been solved in a day!
Why do we talk of operational excellence and ignore its most important component… regular Gemba visits?