Small Problems Yield Big Benefits

Solving small problems is easier than solving big ones, duh! Yet solving the 'big' problems tends to get more kudos.

However, in these tough times, businesses have to improve the efficiencies of their systems to stay afloat. One easy way to do this is to knock out small problems which are creating inefficiencies across the board.

Here's an example: Imagine you have a shipping label printer which misprints 1 in every 10 labels. This doesn't seem like a big deal because it only takes 2 minutes to reprint it. But, this operator ships around 50 boxes per day, meaning they spend 10 minutes per day reprinting labels. Multiply that by 5 days per week, that's 50 minutes per week. Multiple that by the 10 operators who use the same printer, that's around 8 hours per week completely lost to a tiny printer error. By analyzing this to root cause, you find that the printer just needed to be recalibrated and BOOM--problem solved and an inefficiency removed!

There are likely thousands of examples like this within your company. Imagine the time, money and frustration that could be saved by solving just a small percentage of them to root cause.

Have any other examples you'd like to share? Let us know in the comments!