Have an Observer

I dropped a fork in a restaurant but before it touched the ground a clean replacement was positioned on my table. I then took a drink from my water glass and before I could put my glass back a server was next to me ready to fill my glass ... I love good customer service but this was absolutely the next level. I had to figure this out !

As a Lean Practitioner I am always looking for and observing process. Here is what I finally found. There was a spot in the restaurant where a person could witness all of the activity within the dining area. In this spot stood an individual ... the observer !! Whenever a deviation occurred (dropped fork, empty glass, dishes to be cleared etc.) the observer sprang into action to instigate a corrective action. But this was the cool part. Once the observer position was empty immediately another server occupied the space and the responsibility.

What this created was from my perspective a truly outstanding dining experience. I also observed that in spite of a server having to take the observer role it did not interrupt them from catering their assigned guest.

This very simple role made a huge impact to every diner's experience. I quickly concluded that we need more observers and we could use observers everywhere. Since then I have incorporated observers into all of my process re-designs. Why ???

Mathematically a process can be designed and all of the operations balanced to perfection. But then reality manages the execution.

Before going on a quick reflection on process design. First we identify a Process. This process is then segmented with a series of Operations. These Operations then contain a series of Tasks and Sub-Tasks. So a lot of potential levers that can be pulled to create balance.

Now back to Reality. We launch the execution of the Process. Of course it is in balance because we have don the math. The operators begin to execute, but their vision is limited to that 30 inch view (the average length of a human arm). They have no idea if the process has become unbalanced until they have too much work piling up or are starved for work.

Observer to the rescue. Since the Observer is able to look at the entire process as soon as they see a minor attribute making the process go out of balance they can shift a sub-task, task or perhaps even an operation to get the process back into balance.

The Observer shall be dedicated to Observing, with no other tasks. We in the west are conditioned that we need to be moving or doing something in order to show that we are adding some sort of value. Introducing the role of an observer is totally against our better judgement or paradigm.

Observers pay for themselves very quickly. Whatever environment you have I strongly encourage you to add an observer. They will eliminate Disturbances to Flow before they actually impact the process. This helps you to improve Quality, Productivity and Efficiency.