The Hidden Costs of Batching [Lessons from the Road]
Have you ever been on the end of a batched process? Chances are you have, either in your workplace or in your everyday life. If
you have ever been discharged from a hospital or experienced a yearly performance review, you were likely “batched”. In the Lessons from Road the Column I recently wrote for IndustryWeek, I explore the impact of batching on your processes and on your customers. I wrote about how batching leads to waste while negatively impacting your customer and often your team.
In my latest Lessons from the Road column I provide examples of batching “gone bad”. I encourage you to look for ways batching is happening in your own organization and make adjustments in order to decrease waste.
Here is an excerpt from the article:
One of the common missed opportunities is a failure to see the impact of batching on your customer (internal or external) downstream in the process. Do you truly understand how your batching affects others? The impact of batching our work is most likely greater in downstream processes, or for your immediate customer.
One of my favorite examples is the hospital discharge process. Read more
In the column I cover other commonly batched processes that should be examined and considered for improvement such as
- Performance evaluations
- Meetings
- Employee suggestion programs.
Though batching is often used with the intent of saving time, in reality it often leads to waste at the source and further down in the value stream. Examine your own processes – where is batching occurring and how can you improve your processes to remove it?