The wonderful world of operational excellence…

Tell me… is there anything more gorgeous on this planet than efficiency?

There’s just something about muttering terms like ‘process optimisation’ and ‘continuous improvement’ while staring thoughtfully at shelving.

Efficiency has a place firmly in the mechanisms of my heart. Efficiency is on my mind. And I suppose this is why…

We’ve recently started implementing Lean Six Sigma tools at Smoke Screen.

Yes, I know. The name sounds like a management consultancy spouted by a basic word-gen tool or a straight-to-video Jean-Claude Van Damme sequel. But bear with me, because, as I say, there’s nothing more gorgeous than efficiency…

I won’t go deep on its history, but Lean Six Sigma became famous through manufacturing environments like Motorola. The idea’s fairly simple: create repeatable quality, reduce waste, improve efficiency, and stop doing things that make life harder than it needs to be.

Sounds obvious, but you’d be surprised.

Not so long ago I walked into our Smoke Screen warehouse mezzanine – an office space of sorts – and clocked donkey’s years of stuff lying around. Most of the stuff there had been left because it ‘might come in handy one day’. But would it really?

We all got together, looked around, and collectively went: yep, this is getting ridiculous. So that was the trigger.

One of the first elements of ‘Lean’ is something called the Five S system. Sort. Set things in order. Shine. Standardise. Sustain.

Again… wonderfully straightforward on paper. In practice, it meant our team collectively staring at shelves full of old branded materials, obsolete bits, mystery cables, expired packaging, and equipment nobody’s touched since around the fall of the Roman Empire (when security fog was remarkably under-utilised, may I add.)

Businesses accumulate clutter quickly. Physical clutter, process clutter, mental clutter. Tiny inefficiencies that slowly become accepted as normal because everyone’s busy getting on with things.

It took a collective effort for us to actually ask the question: “why is all this here?”

A big reason we picked the warehouse as our first proper Lean Six Sigma exercise was that people could engage with it immediately. It’s tangible. You can see progress as things get tagged, organised, assigned ownership, cleaned up, and repositioned.

And it’s worked! Before long things were looking spick and span, organised, and staying that way! No more wasting ten minutes looking for something that should’ve taken ten seconds to find.

Working through the Five S’s in our warehouse has drastically shifted our approach to the space. We’ve collectively improved how we operate, bit by bit. It’s about organisation to a degree, but largely about accountability. Especially in the ‘Sustain’ element. Everyone’s proud to be playing a part.

That mindset isn’t limited to a single space, either. Not at all. I think that’s the bit I like most about this sort of thing – how quickly habits feed into other areas. Just goes to show it’s less about tidiness than it is about attention.

Talking of attention… one of the other tools inside Lean Six Sigma is something called the ‘5 Whys’. It’s essentially a way of forcing yourself to dig deeper into a problem rather than settling for the first convenient explanation.

We had an issue recently with heat filaments in our machines. The easy answer would’ve been to blame the supplier and crack on. Nice and simple. Everyone loves blaming suppliers. But when we actually asked ‘why’ and worked through the problem, the root cause turned out to be an incorrect tolerance internally. Slightly less dramatic, sure. Heaps more useful though.

These days, everyone tends to rush to react. That’s a major danger in business, as far as I’m concerned. It often means people skip properly understanding what’s gone wrong in the first place.

Now, I should point out: we’re very much beginners in all this. White belt territory. Literally. Everyone at Smoke Screen is now officially Lean Six Sigma White Belt certified. Sounds so deeply American doesn’t it?

I’m fairly sure you receive a white belt roughly four minutes after entering your first judo class, but nevertheless – we’re certified and pressing forward with great enthusiasm.

Makes sense to me, that amid such chaos – there’s serious satisfaction in making things a little clearer, a little cleaner, and a little more intentional. Even if it does begin with throwing away a mountain of ancient brochures from the mezzanine.