Congratulations!
You have just completed our CHL Business Simulation. Here is what we think you may want to remember.
It is very likely that you have been able to improve the business process at hand from a very lousy performance in the morning to outstanding results at the end of the day. Your results may very well look like that:
Customer satisfaction is measured on a Likert scale from 1 to 6 with 1 being the lowest score). Whilst customer satisfaction at the beginning (day 1) of the CHL experience is usually very low (2.5, 1, 1.5 2.5), it goes up for day 2 (3, 3.5, 3, 3) and shows very good rates at day 3.
Never forget: listening to the customer is key. Otherwise, you will never find out why your computer bags cause errors.
Ting your customer!
High customer satisfaction is earned with outstanding business process performance. The yield went up from 53.3% at Day 1 over 81.2% at Day 2 to an exceptional 100% at Day 3 – despite extra challenges thrown in at day 3. Bravo!
At the same time, productivity went up from a mere 1.32 over 5.33 to 20 at Day 3.
Whilst in Day 1 not all 60 packages sent could be invoiced due to errors and backlog, at Day 2 and Day 3 the invoice included all sent packages. The price per package dropped slightly from SGD 23.24 to 22.50.
Before any calculation, data MUST be plot.
Data plots reveal details about variation that are hard to understand from Excel tables only. Day 1 (blue) shows a distinct pattern with an upward trend – a strong sign for a backlog building up. In between (at packages 11 and 18), the backlog has not been cleared but probably put aside to start again.
Whereas the Bar Chart of Day 1 (blue) shows an interrupted process, Day 2 (green) and Day 3 (red) plots display nearly Gauss, i.e., undisturbed processes.
The delivery time at Day 1 is never better than 7 minutes whereas all deliveries at Day 3 (red) are done within one minute. Outstanding!
If we would have asked you in the morning after experiencing Day 1 whether you could do this within one minute, what would have been your answer? Never forget the lesson
“Cannot” cannot!
In between the simulation days – that take only minutes – tools are introduced and their application explained. The real utilisation of these tools on the CHL process is left to the participants. Making mistakes is part of the game and amplifies the learning effect.
Value Stream Mapping is one of the most powerful process mapping tools when it comes to discovering non-value-added steps in processes, i.e., opportunities for cutting waste
So, a simplified version of the powerful Value Stream Mapping (VSM) is core to this CHL experience. In other words, the definition of value added steps and takt time are two central topics necessary to improve the process.
Do you remember the criteria that make a value-added step?
The Takt Time at Day 1 is just 19 seconds. This means, that every process step that takes 19 seconds or more to complete will build up WIP. Hence, if step “Identify Sender and Receiver” requires about 30 seconds, at least two FTE (Full Time Equivalent) are needed since 30/19 = 1.58. This is the reason for the backlog at Day 1.
Other steps, however, show great potential for saving workforce.
Many other concepts can be elaborated using our CHL Business Simulation.
For teaching Innovation and Change management and Innovation and Productivity, the focus is on learning Creative Problem Solving (CPS) tools (Buffalo University).
For example, tools like SCAMPER, Reverse Brainstorming, Idea Box, Forced Connections or Analogies, amongst others, are explained in the context of our CHL Business Simulation for solving the problems highlighted before.
In other words, Creativity and Lean tools are combined to build a powerful toolbox for solving business problems in an innovative and fun way.
For instance , our Lean Innovation Training (LIT) is a powerful way to do exactly this.
With a certain number of participants, our CHL Business Simulation can become a competition.
Then customers have the chance to compare multiple service providers on performance and service mindset.
The customers of these service providers, of four CHL companies, CHL Yellow, CHL Green, CHL Pink and CHL Beige, competing for the big purchase order.
At the end, the winning team is awarded.
In conclusion, the focus of our CHL Business Simulation is on experiential learning of a variety of tools in a fun and memorable way.
“All models are wrong. But some are helpful” was said by George Box. This certainly applies to our CHL experience, which is far from modelling your business, hopefully.
CHL is a mere vehicle to carry many different concepts for solving business problems. It sheds light not only on “hard factors” like turn-around-time (TAT) issues and defects but also on “soft factors”.
Don’t forget lessons like:
Don’t blame the people. Blame the process.
When people walk away after CHL with a smile on their face and statements like “Let’s SCAMPER our own process!” you know that CHL has left an impression.
Architect of High-Performing Organisations
