Continuous Improvement - The Humidifiers (Part II)

by Don Harkey

For those of you haven't read "Continuous Improvement - The Humidifiers (Part I), you might want to follow the link below and read this first. Otherwise, skip the link and let's discuss.

http://galtconsulting.blogspot.com/2009/01/continuous-improvement-humidifiers-part.html#comments

There were some great suggestions on improving the humidifier process. Without seeing the process in detail, it is challenging to develop specific suggestions, but I love the variety of suggestions presented. Like any course of action, they all have advantages and disadvantages. Let's review a few of them.

Humidifier in the Furnace
One suggestion was to eliminate the 3 small humidifiers and install a commercial humidifier in the furnace system. This would definitely improve the process as we have it defined. Other than having the humidifier serviced annually, this would eliminate the daily employee interaction with the humidifier. When talking about process improvements, the first suggestions usually involve spending some money. This might be a good idea, but also presents its own set of barriers. Management may not be willing or able to spend the money. The other problem is that it takes the improvement opportunity out of the hands of the employee and puts it back to management. There are probably ways to drastically improve this process without spending money.

Use 3 Volunteers to Fill the Humidifiers
If the work of filling the humidifiers were spread out to 3 different people, the impact per person would be minimized. This would also encourage a team approach to work. However, the process itself is not really being improved. Are we missing an opportunity?

Use 3 Volunteers and Hold a Contest for the Best Improvement Ideas
This idea really focuses on improving the process and tries to get to people's competitive side. I'm sure this will yield some dramatic process improvements, but there are a couple of problems with this approach. First of all, when you have employees competing with each other, you shut down the flow of information between them. That is admittedly not a huge issue for this example, but it is important when talking about larger projects. In short, competing employees won't help each other. The other issue with this approach is that it sets a very narrow vision for the employees (improve THIS process). If I am very competitive, I might spend several hours coming up with new ideas to improve this process. Spending hours on this is really what we are trying to avoid!

Install a Long Hose / Valve
For a relatively small amount of money, you could install a long hose in the janitor's closet that could reach each humidifier. You could also install a valve at the end of the hose so the employee could start and stop the water on the move. This would certainly improve the process, but we have to watch for other problems. Having 50 feet of coiled up hose in the janitors closet might take up a lot of storage space. Also, dragging a long, wet hose through the office gives a high potential for making a mess at some point.

Do We Really Need a Humidifier?
The question from one respondent was simple, "do we really need the humidifiers?". The specific suggestion was to stop using one and see if anyone noticed a difference. If they didn't notice, stop using 2 and see if anyone notices. Repeat until someone notices the difference or until there are no humidifiers. I am often surprised by how many processes I see that really add no value. If a process is taking up resources, it should be adding value. Does filling the humidifier (or filling out that daily report) really add value worthy of the resource? I like this suggestion a lot, although I would suspect that we would find that the office needed all 3 humidifiers.

Small Improvements Adding Up
I have the luxury of actually filling these humidifiers from time to time and my improvements have all been small, but have really improved the process. For example, I found that waiting for the water to fill the tank seemed like a waste, so I made sure the next tank was ready to fill. My goal when I fill them is to keep the water running as much as possible. Also, I found out that I could carry 4 tanks at once and save an extra trip down the long hallway. Finally, I discovered that staging the tanks so they are ready to be picked up without moving them again keeps me from shifting the filled tanks around (they get in the way). These small improvements were developed without a formal process. They were developed simply by thinking about how I was doing it and thinking about ways to make it better. These small changes improved the process from 12-15 minutes to just over 6 minutes!

Thank you to all who submitted ideas for filling the humidifier. Soon, I will include a YouTube link showing a video of the filling process.