Tool – Visualization

Challenge:

I am a packaging design engineer; I am not an IT professional.  I also have very broad background  including business system development.  It was one of the main reasons I was hired at my current  company.  From day one there was a very clear prime directive form my manager: “We are missing  product launches because art takes too long.  Fix it.  We need an art management tool; we’ve identified  something that will work.  Do what’s necessary to procure and implement this system.”  So as I  mentioned…. engineer.  We tend to be awesome at solving problems unfortunately most people want  to give us the answers and have us blindly implement.

Selection:

When presented with this issue, it was quickly obvious that there was more going on than just  developing and getting approval for the art.  From the start every person involved expressed frustration  and anger at the process.  Art is actually a very small part of the overall launch process.  I decided that  before we spent a significant amount of money and bought a system to solve a problem, we should  figure out what the problem was in the first place.  Problem: We are missing launches. That is clear.   Now to figure out why.  I started with stakeholder interviews just to understand the process and any  obvious frustrations or issues.  Some frightening themes emerged:

•  No one knows the process, sometimes not even their role.  •  I see everything multiple times, so I do not look at it the first 2 or 3 times it comes to my desk.  I  wait until everyone else has commented.    •  There is no timeline, so I have no idea when my part of the process is due.  •  It is not my job and I do not care about the timeline, that is someone else’s problem.

I chose to use visualization to map out the as is process first.  This seemed like a critical activity since no  one really understood the start to finish process and had no connection to it.  I felt they needed an  anchor so that they clearly saw where they fit in to the process and how their activity affected everyone  else in the process.  We needed to get people to care not just about their job but also about the team  and the launch of new products.  We needed people to see themselves as part of a team which could be  relied on to help everyone succeed.

Application:

We started our mapping exercise as a boat trip where tasks moved us along the path to the destination.   We needed to instill in the team that they were in fact a team and we are all in the boat together.  If the  boat does not reach its destination, our business will not succeed and will eventually cease to exist.  We  needed everyone to understand that EVERY action affected everyone else in the process and if one  person faltered in their task, the team needed to step up and assist or crunch downstream activity to  make up the time.  We did a first round with all stakeholders in the room.  We walked through the  activity in detail drawing out each step.  We then added the inputs and output details to the map.  After  the first round was complete and we had translated the map into a digitized workflow diagram, I spent  significant time with each stakeholder group adding details to their touch points including durations so  that eventually a project time table could be built.  The perception in the company was that a new SKU  launch took 16-18 weeks and we needed that number to be 10-12 to be competitive.

What resulted from the first activity was a spaghetti tangle of processes with overlaps, dependencies for  information that didn’t occur until later in the workflow and a lot of infinite loops where activities just  got stuck and there was no way to come to conclusion or end point.  We then deconstructed several

past launches and using the documentation determined how long each part of the process took and  added timelines to the process.  Reality was that most took 32-36 weeks.

We brought everyone back in and started to detangle the mess.  For every activity we asked: who owns  this, who performs this, why are we doing this activity, what’s needed to complete it, what is the output,  how long does the actual activity take, how long should be allocated on a normal basis for this to be  completed understanding total workload, what happens after it’s complete, what happens if there is a  delay.

One major learning was that many of the activities included multiple steps or deliverables and were  often overwhelming for the team member who was responsible for completion, so they procrastinated  in even starting the task.  This frequently added time to the project.  We broke tasks down into smaller  pieces so that they did not require such large blocks of time and could be completed as time allowed.   The work could be spread out amongst multiple team members for one department instead of one  person being responsible for the whole.

We identified that there was a lot of activity that really had nothing to do with the actual launch, but  those events were preventing other launch requirements from occurring because they had been tied  together procedurally.  Some of the infinite loops were result of unclear or non-existent processes and  responsibility matrix.  People were literally figuring it out each time the event occurred, and it was  difficult to get consensus on path forward.  What worked last time, might not be agreed to the next  time.  We clarified/simplified or defined process and RACI charts for every activity.  We also identified  that majority of time was spent figuring out where documents were and what their status was, waiting  for inputs with no visibility to their status and chasing paper around the building.

We slowly untangled the mess and developed a straightforward workflow.  The art, which was perceived  as the problem, really had no impact on the overall timeline.  After the exercise was complete, we  trialed it on paper for a few launches before we identified business workflow software which could  digitize the process and automate many of the simpler activities.

We implemented a software solution which gave the entire team visibility to all the activities.  The  system has validated electronic approvals, so it eliminated any activity associated with chasing paper or  finding documents and getting signatures.  Because everything is digital, team members can complete  tasks and activities from anywhere.

Insight

It was critical that people have a visual anchor to the process but also to each other.  Work had become  impersonal.  Once we got people to understand how they impacted their co-workers and made it  personal, it was easier to get them aligned.  We literally walked them through past launches and had  them look the people in the eye that they impacted with their delays or inaction.  It is a lot harder to  disconnect from a friend/co-worker than a theoretical process.  We made more progress and got better  feedback on individual basis than in group form.  People hesitated to call out bad behavior in groups but  were VERY honest one to one.  Next time I would start with deep dive evaluation of past launches.   Actual events were more grounding to people than describing what they perceived as the process.

