How many times have you had to repeat your orders or return products that do not comply with your specifications?
These are just a couple of wastes that you encounter in transactions, especially in first time interactions. What happens when this happen (no pun intended) is that customers get burned so to speak, and will take their business elsewhere.
An article by Sharad Sharma on iSixSigma identifies three ways to go Lean, thereby doing transactions right the first time.
- Tracking First Time Right Encounters – Measure the current level performance and catching the right transaction at the start of it. For example, bank managers may be used to judging their staff by the time it takes them to resolve a customer query. However, staff may not always provide complete information to customers, which can result in repeat complaints. Thus, it is essential to link an employee’s performance or output with the transactions that are completed correctly the first time.
- Improving Performance – Make sure that people understand fully the tasks that they are going to do. Often, mistakes or omissions are made because the people doing the tasks do not understand the procedure at all.
- Cutting out Waste – Know the seven kinds of wastes (defects, overproduction, processing, waiting, inventory, motion, and transportation) understand each, and avoid it at all cost.
Yes, I am an advocate for doing things right at the first time.
