After a daylong ride with a driver delivering propane, we gathered at the yard to prepare the trucks for the following day. I casually asked the drivers, “Well, did we make any money today?” The answer: “We must have because we sure pumped a lot of propane.” Yes, but did we pump it to the right accounts in the right amounts should have been one question. A second question should have been, did we do it in an efficient manner? The answer to the second question would have probably been no. One of the greatest challenges facing the vice president of operations was to get drivers to adjust to efficient routing by the computer instead of door-to door sequential deliveries. It seems logical to a driver with years of experience to catch the next house down the street. Yet when the operations staff ran cost data to demonstrate the compared efficiencies of the two models, the drivers still disbelieved.
Heat loss takes on many forms. These forms cause the organization to function at less than maximum performance levels. It can be overt or it can be subtle. The loss of organizational effectiveness can be small or large. In all cases, taking out wasted motion is important to your story because it improves the bottom-line profits. To find these central pools of loss, look closely at two areas:
1. Islands of power (where power in many forms is being used in an unproductive fashion)
2. White space (places in your organization where the lack of assigned responsibility and accountability are creating losses)