Shaving seconds

We are likely all familiar with these two somewhat similar clichés, but with diametrically opposed philosophies:

“Take care of the pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves.”

“Pennywise and dollar foolish” are the words that we use to describe someone that does not take care of the pennies.  Which one of these phrases best describes you?

Years ago, I learned to micro-manage the heck out of this business.  When I worked for my father in his laundry and drycleaning business, I didn’t have anything to with finances, business decisions or even supplies purchases.  I was only involved with operations.  In retrospect, that is how I became so involved in the grassroots of this business – operations, people management, training and work-flow. 

If I was to keep from getting bored in this business, I needed to micro-manage every minute of time.  From there, I learned that saving seconds could accumulate and become minutes and hours and that pennies could pile up and become dollars.  Ben Franklin said “Time is money,” so, believing that, I knew that the two thoughts were related. 

I learned that I could create slivers of time when others thought that there were none.  Moving forward, I learned about something called “time management.”  You probably know about that too.  Interestingly, it is a nonsensical phrase.  Time is one of the things that you absolutely can not manage.  Time is oblivious to you, your problems or your challenges.  Time marches on at the same exact rate whether you have 100 shirts to do today, or 5,000 or more.  Time is like a merry-go-round that is turning just a little bit too fast.  If you try to jump on without the proper running start, you’re liable to make it look pretty ugly.  Time won’t bat an eye though; it will simply move on.  But if you plan it right, you can keep pace with it all.  All you can really do is manage the tasks that need to neatly fit into rigid time frames that offer no flexibility.  A successful manager is better at fitting an array of tasks in a given time frame.  The more compactly they fit, the more productivity in the same time slot. 

How do you get something done?  Delegate it to a busy person. 

Creating slivers of time and then using them wisely is fun.  And actually, quite rewarding.  When you learn to do that, you are amazed at how much you can accomplish. 

Many years ago, I was working with my very first trainee.  I was teaching her how to press on an Ajax sleever.  It was grueling.  She was not a good pupil.  Even though she had less than one day’s experience, she was already saying things like “my way is almost as fast” or, “I like my own way better.” By crossing my hands when unloading the sleeve press, I could go about 2-3 seconds faster than her.  She was not eager to follow my instruction.  Surely, she reasoned: “two or three seconds?  There is virtually no difference there. I rather be 2-3 seconds slower and be comfortable doing <it> my own way.” 

Most managers accept that.  They accept it for the very same reason that they accept 40 shirts per hour on a machine that should do 50 or more. 

If you are going to save any quantity of time on just about any procedure in this business it is going to be slivers of time.  It is going to be a few seconds here and a few seconds there.  You make a big mistake trivializing miniscule time savings on procedures that don’t take a whole bunch of time anyway.  If my trainee could unload an Ajax sleever in 10 seconds instead of 12 or 13 seconds, she would be 20%-30% faster.  Do that with each procedure on your single buck shirt unit and you will turn 40 shirts per hour (far from acceptable) to 50 shirts per hour (a good productivity rate). 

A few years after that incident, I was training a new body press operator on a FujiStar shirt press.  My business plan was built around 180 shirts per hour from this shirt unit.  The one hundred and fifty shirts per hour that I was getting sounded good, but to me, it meant that I wouldn’t be eating this week.  As I did throughout my entire career of plant management, I watched every detail like a hawk.  I measured productivity every hour and I still recommend that today.  Still, accumulating data is a waste of time and a waste of money if you don’t know what to do with it.  Printing reports sounds like a great manager-type thing to do, but it only serves to help deforest the Pacific Northwest if you don’t act on what these reports tell you.  If your reports tell you that shirt pressing productivity it too low, what will you do about it now that you know?  If you do nothing, the reports have served no purpose. 

As I monitored my shirt presser’s performance, I started to see a sharp spike in productivity for about an hour on some days.  I had to find out why.  If I could duplicate that hour, about 35 times more every week, profit would surely follow.  When I approached the presser, he wasn’t surprised about his occasional peak performance.  He knew exactly why it happened and told me point-blank.  He was right and it taught me to look for little things.  It taught me that if I wanted to cut labor costs, I would have to look for little things.  I’d have to look under a microscope.  If I was to trim an employee from my staff, I would need to create an “extra” person before I could cut that person.  The only way to do that it to maximize the use of labor hours and labor minutes, eventually getting a little, tiny bit off person A, B, C and D’s job done by person E, without increasing person E’s hours, but decreasing the other’s hours.  Our forefathers found ways to cut huge chunks of labor costs from payroll by automating.  Have you ever seen an authentic Chinese shirt laundry?  Its fascinating.  They use 6 people to do what 2 people with modern equipment do.  Now we have two and we still need to keep an eye on costs lest they get out of control.  The secret is in the little things.  So how did my shirt presser explain the occasional spikes in productivity?  We washed and pressed shirts for a tuxedo rental outfit.  Every day, in season, we would have 100-200 tux shirts to press.  They were quicker to press because the presser had one small step absent from his routine:  He didn’t have to fold down the collar because there wasn’t one.  These were wingtip shirts.  Just a couple of seconds less work and I got 20% better production.  If I remember correctly, shear repetition and practice turned him into a faster presser, but I learned to analyze the smallest motions and tried to improve on them.  If I could find a way to do a 10 second procedure in 8 seconds, I knew that I could turn it into something big.

The best operators in the world generate a 30%-40% profit margin in this business.  The poorest profit margins are in the 0%-10% range.  Do you see a connection?  The best operators always look for ways to shave seconds of time.  That 20% – 30% savings is the profit!  Do you see a connection now?

“If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you always got.”