Learning launch

The challenge that I am going to analyze is about my parent’s job. My parents own a milk factory

in which they receive milk that comes in trucks from farms that are nearby and then they send the

milk to a bigger factory in. One of the biggest challenges, is to reduce the time of discharging the

milk  from the trucks because the employees take too long to make this activity so the trucks that

arrive start to agglomerate and they have to wait a long time so the milk gets hotter which can

become a big problem. This process must take between one hour to one and a half to be done but

the employees sometimes take up to 3 hours which is the double of the time that they should take.

I choose learning launch as the tool I am going to use because I think this is the most efficient way

to think of the best solution to solve the problem. I want the employees to give they own ideas

about the changes that can be made to improve the process because they are the ones that are

responsible of it. Other thing that I am going to do is to talk with the owners and ask them what

they think about the problem and why they think this happened. Learning launch is going to help

me to find the best solution for the problem by comparing the different ideas that are going to be

said by the owners and the employees.

To apply the tool, I’m going to talk with two groups: the employees and the owners, and ask them

3 question, let them brainstorm, and take note of all the responses and ideas that they say, because

no idea should be discarded. The question are going to be: what do you think it is the biggest

problem in this process?, what do you think it can be improve? and, what steps do you think are

the most effective to follow in order to reduce the time of discharge?. I’m going to analyze all the

responses that they gave and choose the one that repeat the most, then I’m going to present this

procedure to the employees and make them prove it, so I can know if it is effective or not.

After asking the question I realize that the owners and the employees have a totally different point

of view in some question and similar ideas in others. The owners said that they identified that the

employees take so long to discharge the milk because they want to receive more money from the

extra hours that they take doing this activity which is a problem because they are spending more

money paying the employees. On the other hand, the employees said that they take so long because

there is only one pump to discharge de milk from the truck, but they agree that if they organize

more and follow specific steps, they can reduce the time beside the problem of the pump.

The employees all together come with the best steps to follow in order to reduce the time, this

steps were prove and gave successful results by reducing the time to and 1 hour and a half, and

they said that if there is another pump they can reduce more this time. They realize that by taking

more time they are hurting the company and they are making the owners to spend more money

which can be used to buy another pump in order to speed up the discharging of the milk.

By talking with the owners and the employees, I realize that every person has a different point of

view which is a good thing because there are going to be many ideas and solutions for a particular

situation. Every idea can be a solution, you can combine the different ideas to become with a better

one. I identified that is better if you hear first and then give your opinion because in this way you

are not finding evidence to prove that what you are thinking is the right thing.

One of the things that I might change the next time is the size of the groups, I will make smaller

ones or individual talks, because when there is a big group everybody wants to talk and you don’t

have the same opportunity to express yourself as in a small group. If you talk alone with other

person no one can influence over your opinion so you can express yourself freely. I wouldn’t

change the tool but maybe combine it with visualization, so the employees can imagine and create

in their minds all the changes that they wanted to be done and how they see the results and then

express their thoughts and give ideas.

