Applying Lean Six Sigma to Relocations

Since its development at Motorola and General Electric in the United States from the 1980s to early 2000s, the Lean Six Sigma methodology has expanded to all areas of business, from manufacturing to finance. By combining the concepts of lean manufacturing and enterprise, and Six Sigma, this collaborative effort between colleagues can significantly reduce ‘waste’ in your business while increasing up productivity.

Worrying About Waste

The following eight types of waste were initially defined for the manufacturing industry, but many are still applicable to those of us in the global mobility sector.

• Defects
• Overproduction
• Waiting
• Non-Utilised Talent
• Transportation
• Inventory
• Motion
• Extra-Processing

Relocation professionals are not concerned with the designing, making and distribution of products, but that does not mean that we do not generate waste. In fact, we can create a lot with inefficient work practices and poor time management. Reductions in service quality, long response times and the withering of gross margins can all be seen as wasted opportunities for the business, and can all be addressed by following the Lean Six Sigma principals.

The first step therefore when applying this system of working to your business is to identify what the potential areas of waste are. Once the key areas that need to be improved have been found, you should also decide how far you want these different areas of your business to develop. For example, your typical response time for assignee queries is three days, but you want to reduce it to one. These will be your key performance indicators (KPIs) for the Lean Six Sigma process and will act as starting points and targets for the procedure.

The Five Ss of the Workplace

When applying Lean Six Sigma to the workplace, there are five Japanese principles which aim to improve nearly any area of the business or project that is undertaken. The Five Ss work together to ensure that the workflow is regular and consistent, allowing excess and waste to be identified, and subsequently eliminated.

1. Sort (Seiri)

Order your process, and remove any excess steps or people which are not necessary for completion of the task.

2. Straighten (Seiton)

Put everything in its correct place, ensure that everyone knows their relative roles in the task and who is responsible for which parts. Establish timescales and guidelines.

3. Shine (Seiso)

Keep everything clean as you work, tie up loose ends wherever possible, write notes and file neatly as appropriate. Do not allow the job to become a metaphorical mess.

4. Standardise (Seiketsu)

Establish systems and procedures to standardise steps 1 - 3, ensuring smooth and straightforward running in the future. Tweak the steps as needs be, to ensure efficiency and the elimination of waste.

5. Sustain (Shitsuke)

Keep using steps 1 - 4 to ensure success. Ensure that all others in the organisation are following the procedures and making recommendations for further improvements to the systems in place.

Following these five simple steps do not have to make your workplace one full of robotic staff, but provides a standardised framework around which improvements can be made. This method of working also increases efficiency, allowing relocation professionals more time to be spent on the more human aspects of relocation and improving the quality of service for your assignees.

The Five Whys of Evaluation

One of the simplest, but most effective methods of evaluating issues when using Lean Six Sigma is using five whys. That is, asking yourself and others ‘why’ something happened the way it did, and then responding to their subsequent answers to the same question. Often, this allows us to drill down the root cause of the problem and fix the issue once and for all, instead of acting against what may just be a symptom of a more significant problem.

For example, an assignee has complained that they have been waiting for information on available rental properties in their destination city for a long time; why has it taken so long? The estate agent has not sent us any recommendations yet; why haven’t they sent anything? They have not received the full specifications for the types of property yet; why haven’t they received the specs? Because the assignee has not returned the needs request form; why haven’t they returned the form? Because they never received the form; why didn’t they receive the form? Because an intern had mislabelled the assignee's service requirements in the master relocation file.

Although this example is somewhat unlikely to occur, you can see that by repeatedly asking the question ‘why?’ we drill down from what could have initially been seen as incompetence on the part of an estate agent, to discovering clerical errors within our own business. This methodical identification of the source of issues allows targeted efforts to overcome wasted potential within the organisation. After all, working to find a new agent for a region would result in a lot more work and wasted time than an extra few hours training for an intern.