If you are like many of my readers, your commute to work is a matter of steps from the house to the barn and that’s one of the many advantages of owning your horse business. No traffic snarls of wasted time or elevated blood pressure before your work day begins
My commute to the office is about seven minutes long; a straight shot from driveway to office building. There is a lot to be said for the simplicity of life in a small town.
However, when I’m listening to morning drive time radio from Buffalo and Toronto stations, I hear frequent traffic reports about bottlenecks in rush hour traffic flow. If you live in or near a big city, you know all about beating traffic problems – it’s a way of life.
Those darn bottlenecks – the spots where construction is happening, accidents have occurred or just too many drivers are competing for scarce real estate for their four tires. Some engineering folks refer to these as chokepoints – critical spots along a route where free flow is strangled to a trickle of movement.
My friend Jerry recently told me a story about his experience with a bottleneck in production at a stone quarry. A number of years ago his boss at the quarry knew that production (making big stones into little stones) was not as high as it could be. The boss wasn’t quite sure where the slow spot was in production, so he sent Jerry out to videotape the process in action from high up at the top of the quarry hole. It was a stealth mission so as to not disrupt the employees’ normal workflow habits.
Jerry’s videotape revealed in just a few minutes of filming that the rock crusher in the quarry was operating perfectly; the problem discovered was that the crusher sat idle while waiting for the next truck to carry the crushed rock away. The lack of sufficient truck capacity had created a bottleneck in the work flow.
Daily production was limited to the time it took for each truck to make a round trip dumping stone. Talk about being dumb as a rock! By just adding another truck to the crushing operation, production doubled.
Well, duh, why didn’t they figure that out sooner? The workers in the pit knew they only had one truck to use, just couldn’t produce any faster. The people in the office knew that production was consistent so that meant that’s as good as we can do.
The boss’s intuition told him that there was something missing and he took the initiative to study the process. Perhaps he knew the forest view is always obstructed by the trees. . . or the rock pile.
So have a peek at your business this week. Where are your bottlenecks? You know you have them.
- Will more wheelbarrows speed the mucking process?
- Will a better system for feeding with a cart or more convenient locations for feed make for better flow?
- Do you need one central paperwork collection box in the barn for reports, payments, messages?
- Would a few strategically placed wall clocks in the barn, viewing lounge and outdoor and indoor arenas help you, employees and clients be more time conscious?
- Would an investment in extra lead lines reduce steps through the day in horse handling?
- Is the daily or weekly schedule of lessons, training, horse shows, visitors and deliveries posted so all can know what’s happening?
You get the idea.
It’s usually simple to fix bottlenecks in work flow. The difficulty lies in identifying them.
Keep your eyes open for the chokepoints, get the tow truck in there and remove or repair the obstructions. It’s all about flow.