Challenge

I am part of a sand mining business. We mine and supply natural building material.  Our organisation is divided into three components, namely: Mining, Transportation and  Stock piling depot. We supply material to variety of clients ranging from big  construction companies to individuals who may want to renovate or build a new home.  Our challenge is to improve our operations in order to make them more efficient. By  resolving this challenge, we will be able to serve our clients better and improve the  organisation’s profitability. Our main focus will be on the usage of machinery and plant  equipment during mining and transportation activities. We aim to discover what the  team members regard as challenges that hinder efficient and effective production  practices in the mining and transportation activities.

Selection

Our chosen design thinking tool in addressing the challenge that we are facing is the  learning launch tool. In basic terms, the learning launch tool is an experiment that  seeks to examine ones new idea, to test its fitness in a real market place. The reason  for choosing this tool is that it is customer centric, hence it requires one to get out there  and talk to the customer. The fundamental element in this tool is to formulate a  hypothesis. In the video by Norbert Pohl, it is highlighted that the purpose of a learning  launch is to get the truth. This truth will either confirm or disconfirm the assumptions  made.

Application

In applying this tool, we followed the learning launch process. We put our idea into a  hypothesis. We then established our key assumptions. For our first learning launch,  we focused on the usage of the plant and equipment during the production processes.  This tested our assumption that the usage of the plant and equipment were the key  causes of our challenge. The management spent some time at the mine, observing  carefully how the operations were being executed using the mining equipment.  Important data was noted down. Results were further analysed and thereafter,  recommendations were presented to the entire team on how to be more efficient in the  usage of equipment in order to improve the organisation’s operations.

In our second learning launch, we shifted our focus on examining employee  performance and execution of duties in the production and delivery of goods to our  customers. This tested our assumption that employee performance affected the  efficiency of the organisation’s operations. Behaviour, skills and performance of staff  members was examined for a week. Data was collected. Thereafter, a documented  report with a clear outline of expectations from staff was presented.

Insight

Through the application of the learning tool, we were able to develop our key  assumptions which we thought were the causes to our organisation’s inefficiencies as  far as operations were concerned. Furthermore, we were able to test, through relevant  data and analysis, whether or not the assumptions were true. The results confirmed  our assumptions. However, there were other elements which were picked up as  possible causes of operational inefficiencies. Therefore, this exercise was an eye- opener for us as management to rethink the way of doing business. Personally, this  experience has taught me to appreciate design thinking approach as opposed to the  traditional way of doing things by asking the right questions (what is, what if, what  wows and what works).

Approach

I think next time I would do more experiments and tests in order to achieve better  results. This will provide better outcomes on what works. Also, in the future learning  launches, there should be proper prioritization of assumptions in order to guide the  process better. It would also be ideal to first use the visualization tool so that the  current state could be broadly defined when attempting to discover what is. In this way,  better ideas will be arrived at.

