
How we slashed waiting times for our customers
VIDEO INTERVIEW – A store manager explains how a simple kaizen reduced waiting times for customers who want to return products. We use today’s video to launch our Lean Improv contest.
Words: Zsolt Móczik, Deputy Store Manager, Praktiker Hungary
As a company, we want to make it easy for our customers to return products, should they wish to do so. So, when our transformation started, shortening the time it took them to return items quickly became a lean project at one of our stores in Budapest.
By observing the process, we realized that our Information Desk staff (those who in contact with customers returning products) wasn’t equipped to effectively and swiftly answer the query. They didn’t have the information they needed in order to make an informed decision on whether a product could be returned (if it’s been used, for instance, we don’t take it back), and as a resulted they used to rely on the salesperson from the area the product originally came from.
Not only did this mean a long wait for our customers, but also that our salespeople spent a staggering 51 days a year walking back and forth from their areas to the Information Desk, just to complete a process that other staff could have done… given the right information.
Take a look at this video to learn how we fixed the problem.
THE AUTHOR

Read more


CASE STUDY – Hotels of the Palladium Group are implementing Lean Thinking in their housekeeping departments to improve efficiency and service quality.


PROFILE – It isn’t every day that you come across a hospital CEO coaching people on A3s and following his own standard work. So when you do, it’s important to share their story. This month we profile the CEO of a Brazilian cancer treatment center.


FEATURE – This piece analyzes the different elements of scrum, an agile software development framework, as seen from the point of view of traditional lean thinking.


FEATURE – As we progress on our lean journey, results seem to become harder to achieve: it’s because we need to become more granular in our analysis and improvement of the work.