Finding Kaizen Inspiration: Improving Everyday Processes

A magazine once asked lean practitioners where their inspiration to fight the good fight was drawn from. This got me thinking, and I concluded that mine comes from seeing glaring opportunities every day, hence the café picture above.

Where Do Kaizen Ideas Come From?

Kaizen ideas can spring from various environments: train stations, aeroplanes, blood donation centers, rugby dressing rooms, parties, and even gardening. You name it; kaizen is available for mining anywhere there's a process aimed at delivering value for yourself or others.

Which brings me to the café queue.

Recently, I found myself in the café of a large UK department store. I spent 11 minutes waiting in a coffee and cake queue. Upon entering, my companion sniffed the air, sized up the queue, and decided her best plan was to bolt for a table.

Fair enough.

But while I was standing there, I couldn’t help watching the process.

And once you start seeing work this way, it is very hard to stop.The picture below summarizes our experience, with numbers aiding in narrating the tale.

Kaizen Examples and the 7 Wastes in Everyday Life

Here are some noteworthy steps I observed during my visit:

1. People join the queue here.

2. They get to this point in the queue to choose a delicious panini.

3. They clutch their cold panini for another 5 minutes until they reach the cashier.

4. The cashier, whom we'll call "Claire," completes the transaction and calls her kitchen associate.

5. The associate, "Katie," walks to meet her.

6. The cold panini is handed over.

7. Katie takes it back to where the ovens are located.

8. Claire gives the shopper a numbered block as a visual signal, indicating they should place it on their table while awaiting their warmed panini.

9. When it's ready, Katie retrieves it and walks back to find the shopper.

10. Sometimes, she confirms the number with Claire.

Nobody was doing anything wrong. The staff were working hard. The customers were patient enough. The system was just making everyone work harder than they needed to.

Kaizen examples and the 7 Wastes in everyday life

In this one café queue, you could see several of the 7 Wastes.

Operator Motion

There is a significant amount of unnecessary walking around involved in this process.

Bad Quality

The customers are left with cold paninis, which is unappetizing.

Overprocessing

The process is unnecessarily complex, leading to frustration for both staff and customers.

Transportation

Katie walks to deliver the rapidly cooling panini, wasting time.

Idle Time

I experienced unnecessary queuing and waiting, leading to frustration.

Improving the Work - Continuous Improvement Ideas

As I observed this cycle repeat, I wondered aloud why they couldn't work differently. Here are some suggestions for improvement:

• Introduce a laminated picture combined with a chute at point (3).

• Customers could choose their panini and send it down the chute.

• As they approach the cashier, customers can grab a laminated picture of their selected panini. This would require a manageable number of pictures with barcodes.

• By the time customers arrive at the cashier, their panini could be ready, allowing for a seamless scanning process to complete the purchase.

  
  

While this proposal requires careful planning to effectively link the shopper to their panini—especially if lead time varies—it presents an easy opportunity to:

1. Increase customer satisfaction through reduced lead times.

2. Reduce operator motion, resulting in less tired associates.

3. Improve throughput while decreasing labor costs.

Would it need testing? Yes.

Would you need to manage variation in heating times, customer flow and order accuracy? Absolutely.

But that is the point of Kaizen. You do not need a perfect answer on the first attempt. You need a better question, a simple trial, and a way to check whether the change helped.

Why Bother Increasing Your Lean Skills Outside of Work?

While this café example may seem trivial, consider the broader implications when applying such thinking to vital scenarios. Imagine this mindset in a Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) treatment camp for Ebola victims or a refugee camp on the Syrian border. The potential for improvement is vast.

To their credit, Toyota and other companies have helped in these kinds of situations. I would heartily recommend the following:

Society won't collapse if this café maintains its wasteful practices. Still, it does provide us with opportunities to hone our skills by finding kaizen examples in everyday life. Let's work together to eradicate cold paninis and enhance our lean skills in the process.

Want to build this skill on the shop floor?

If you want your team to get better at spotting and tackling waste in their own area, our 7 Wastes online course is designed to help them do exactly that.

It takes learners beyond the theory of TIMWOOD and gets them applying the thinking to real work. They learn how to identify waste, prioritise what to tackle, use a Problem Follow-Up sheet, and run simple PDCA trials to check whether their improvement has worked.

The aim is not to sit through training and tick a box.

The aim is to help people see work differently, make practical improvements, and build confidence using Lean in the real world.