The Value of Two Seconds

Thanks for reading Thrift Retailer’s blog. Today's topic is about improving productivity.

Labor is such an issue these days. It’s hard to find people, harder to get them to stay and represents a big investment. 

Figuring out how to do more with less isn’t just a nice idea, It’s vital to surviving and even thriving in today’s environment. 

A great productivity book that I find useful is 2 Second Lean, How to Grow People and Build a Lean Culture by Paul A Akers. (not a paid endorsement) 

Lean and Kaizen aren’t as mystical and magical as some people think. It’s about finding better ways to do things, that’s it. According to my Japanese brother-in-law, the word Kaizen basically means to make better.

Something we all work on each day. 

Two-second lean is about finding a way to get two seconds better each day. It can be as simple as where something is placed at a workstation. Changes are all about simplifying, everyone wants to simplify their lives and work. 

Lean is nearly a religion to Paul Akers owner of FastCap LLC . Back room production in thrift is basically manufacturing.  

Taking raw materials (donations) using various processes to create sellable merchandise (product). 

The fix what bugs you idea expressed in his book is deceptively simple. It works whether you have one or a thousand employees. Even if you are the one employee. It all starts with asking “What bugs you?” Then, “How can we fix it” Then do it. 

A real-life example of mine involves tagger tails used in textile production. In case you aren’t familiar, they are the little plastic things that attach a tag to clothing. They cost a fraction of a cent a piece. 

One of my stores had a supply person that treated every little thing like gold bars. Everything was in a locked cage and inventoried more carefully than the cash in the building. 

To her credit, that store’s supply expenses were very low.

One day a textile producer pointed out that she was only allowed to have a couple of strips of tagger tails at a time. Not even enough to get through an hour of work. Here again, we are talking about pennies. 

When someone needed more they had to stop what they were doing, (their core job) find the person taking care of supplies or a manager, go to the locked supply cage, get the supplies, and return to their workstation. 

You see the problem. 

Once affected parties were gathered for a quick standup meeting it only took a few seconds for everyone to agree there had to be a better system, well almost everyone.

On the spot, we decided that issuing a whole box at a time to each station made more sense. That’s generally the equivalent of a day or two of production. 

Several things happened in this interaction:

1. The producer shared what bugged her.
2. We discussed how things were and what would make it better.
3. We pulled together affected parties for a standing meeting.
4. We made a decision right there.
5. In this case, management had to pick a side because the Queen of the supply hill liked the current system. She failed to justify the net benefit of how her process was beneficial. 
6. A new process was put in place for all producers and production stations.
7. Management made sure the new process stuck. 
8. Net savings: hours a week, every week. 

We didn’t do a time study, I believe we saved at least a couple of hours a week making this one change. Two hours equated to two more racks of goods on the floor with no added expense. At that time we valued the average rack at $400.00 in sales. You have to lose a lot of tagger tails to make up for $800. 

This post also availiable as a PDF and a Podcast.

One improvement often opens the door to more. 

Store management took a deeper dive into how supplies were managed. Over the next month, many supplies were re-distributed, and new ways to account for them were developed. Yes, their supply expenses went up a little but remained below average. 

Guess what else happened? More improvements percolated up. We couldn't use them all, but lots of ways to smooth out the workflow were implemented. 

People owned their jobs a little more as they felt heard and had some control over their work environment. All wins. 

This is the foundation of Kaizen/Lean, small improvements shared and respected, lots of them. They are like grains of sand, one isn’t a big deal, but enough and you can build castles. 

The key ingredient is action. 

When I worked for Wal-Mart we had a mantra that “a good decision today is better than a great decision tomorrow” Often attributed to George Patton. The second layer was that it was OK to make a new decision tomorrow. In other words, try stuff and try again. 

This doesn’t happen in a “command and control” top-down leadership environment where upper management knows and decides everything. 

In another example, It bugged sales floor staff that housewares carts came out with stuff that was stocked all over the store. They spent a lot of time walking around to stock fresh product. 

In production, we changed to a system where prepared goods were placed on carts by area. Dishes and cookware all went on one cart, toys, games, puzzles, another, and so on. 

There was a trade-off in that it took more space in production to keep several carts. The time it took a producer to put something on this or that cart involved a couple more walking steps. 

After working out some bugs we discovered that it took about 75% less time to stock a cart under the new system. A huge leap forward. The backroom trade-off was a great investment. 

The last one, promise.

It bugged cashiers about how hard it was to pull plastic shopping bags apart and how much they wasted doing so. We were buying the cheapest possible plastic bags. Cheap often isn’t cheaper. 

We upgraded our bags a bit and sure enough, customers were sent on their way quickly and our waste went down. Financially that was more or less a wash. The benefit was quicker service, less frustrated cashiers, and less plastic in the trash. 

Ask yourself: What bugs you at work?

What can I do about it?

Ask your employees what bugs them. 

Fix it.

Below are several youtube videos that I curated for you. They might spark some ideas in your world. Each follows the theme of employee-involved process improvement.

What I like best about the speed tape video is how improvements come from rank-and-file workers, not from “on high”. Paul, the CEO was simply informed about the improvements. The employee was quite proud of his accomplishments, which can only lead to more productivity and improvements. 

The 2-second lean in Germany is a great example of how to lead someone to better processes without just handing them solutions. I am sure Paul knew exactly what needed to be done. He helped them work through a number of improvements, at best pointing out areas that could be better without handing the student the answers to the quiz. 

Paul Acres has a whole youtube channel devoted to Lean click here to check it out. He has 21.9K subscribers. (again, not a paid endorsement)

The how much do you spend on garbage video is interesting in how several people and departments were involved in a major leap forward. 

Tim Gebauer

Thrift Retailer - Dedicated to the business of thrift retail.

I am happy to connect here on LinkedIn.

Or on my blog at thriftretailer.com