Quick and Easy Kaizen lessons at the food bank.

Last night many of our church members went to volunteer at the Gleaners Food bank in Indianapolis.  In the space of about two hours, we assembled 640 boxes of food and I learned some good lessons.  My job was to "stock" 5 lines of food items for volunteers assembling the standard box of food on the line.  As I was supplying the boxes of corn flakes, I noticed the teenage girl removing the corn flakes packages from the large box had a hard time getting the first one out.  This was due to the tight packing of the cereal packages in the large box.  She would sometimes take what seemed to be a long time to remove the first corn flakes box in a busy fast moving assembly line.

My quick and easy kaizen was that when I opened the big box of corn flakes to supply her, I pulled one package out and set it on top.  This then made it easy for her since she didn't waste time struggling to pull the first one out and quicker to get two in at a time.  Just a little change like that made it easier and faster.

What have you improved today?

Dan Lafever