Two years ago, I met with the management team at a prospective customer.
They had visited one of our customers who uses CIMCO Software and were very impressed.
During a visit to their facility, I received a lot of input from their wish list. They had some great ideas and ambitions for improvements.
Before I left, they asked me to work up a quote to get started, the best possible outcome I could have asked for. There were many components to this quote, it was a lot of work.
When I sent the first version to them, they were not at all impressed.
In fact, they indicated it was the most complicated quote they had ever received. The face-to-face impression was great, but the digital one was a bust.
Needless to say, this one did not go anywhere after a number of iterations and attempts to simplify things, very likely due to that first terribly complicated quote. The damage was done!
At that time, I resolved to improve our quoting processes. This is one of the first things Dawn Buford helped me do when she joined our team this year.
Looking back, I realize simplifying things has always been part of what I’ve strived to do for as long as I can remember. It is literally part of my process, integral to it.
From the technology side I’ve always seen it as my job to make something as easy as possible to understand.
On the customer side, we work hard to try to keep projects focused, while leaving enough flexibility for some emerging enhancements.
In design, we try to limit the number of steps and simplify the user’s experience.
For example, one very complex workflow comes to mind. The customer had 14 barcode steps they wanted, and by using machine signals and a few creative improvements to the CIMCO MDM software, we eventually reduced it to three.
Like so many things we deal with, I am reminded that this is yet another journey. A pursuit of True North rather than a destination, just like Lean Manufacturing and Industry 4.0.
Recently, we received incredible affirmation that our new quoting system is much better.
While discussing a large and complex project with another customer, we were told the quote we provided them was the best they’d ever seen, and had not gone unnoticed.
While reflecting on this transformation, I knew I had to share this with the Five Minute Gemba readers. If I had such a huge blind spot, I thought maybe I could help you see yours (if you have one).
I mentioned limiting decisions as a common way to reduce defects. So, I decided to do a little research on the subject. What I discovered actually surprised me.
Did you know decision fatigue is believed to (source):
- Reduce our ability to make trade-offs, the most difficult decisions where there are both positive and negative aspects to the choices.
- Lead consumers to make poor choices while shopping.
- Affect self-regulation (debt, lack of exercise, underachievement at work or school).
- Lead people with a high burden of decision making to make disastrous failures controlling impulses in their private lives.
- Reduce favorable rulings by judges.
- Lead to decision avoidance (failure to take action/accept status quo).
Hopefully, this will immediately help you. If nothing comes to mind right away, take a moment or two every day for the next few days with the goal of identifying bottlenecks caused by decision fatigue or things that are more complicated than they should be. Write them down like a task list and invest whatever time you can afford to eliminate those bottlenecks.
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(This newsletter was originally published on March 30, 2021.)
Image courtesy of Victoriano Izquierdo
