A great experience: Greater Chicago Food Depository
I had a wonderful, wonderful Saturday and I want to remember it so that I can make future Saturdays as fun and successful.
I went to volunteer through Chicago Cares at the Greater Chicago Food Depository and I was surprised how many people were there. There were over 100 people from Boy Scouts to seniors. From kids who hijacked cars doing community service to families. The hodgepodge mix of people was very interesting and there were many activities. Some main ones included breaking down boxes, sorting food items, stacking boxes and putting cereal into 8 ounce packages.
I was in a group with Charlie, a high school teacher that taught freshmen, who noticed my Michigan Alumni shirt and told me he was a fellow alumni as well. As I worked there and chatted I noticed the differences in throughput per task depending on the skill level of the people at the table. This brought me back to my old operations management classes that I loved so much in b-school.
There were two lines of table with many big buckets on the table full of cereal. People with scoops were around the buckets and filling individual bags with approximately 8 ounces of serial. After they filled the bag they had to label the bag with a sticker. After this they would take the cereal bag to the weighing area where the bags would be weighed and bound up. When the big buckets were empty, we would take them to an area where two guys had large scoops would fill our bucket with cereal to take back to the assembly table.
I noticed that some people like Charlie were exceptionally fast at filling the bags with cereal. The hard part was that you had to keep the bag open with one hand while scooping the cereal in without having the small bag collapse on itself. Charlie was also standing on the far side and he would have to walk a further distance to deposit the bag at the weighing station. Some people were also better at peeling off stickers to label the bags because it was tough with our gloves on. I felt that specialization of tasks would be a better approach and that one person could take off their gloves to label the bags more efficiently. Charlie’s opportunity cost of time was much higher because he was the best at filling the bags with cereal whereas walking took everyone roughly the same time so Charlie was best utilized if he could continuously fill bags.
I created a two-prong steering strategy which I implemented to try to increase the efficiency of our units and nearby units. First, I dislike bossy people so I asked questions to get people to look at our operating efficiency. I said, “Do you guys think that it’s more efficient to use an assembly line approach or to assemble the whole unit ourselves.” Then we debated for a few minutes the merits and flaws with using an assembly line while we continued to do it the old way. We came to the consensus that the only bad part was that it was a bit more boring to specialize in one task. Thus, I then initiated tier two of my strategy by taking off one glove and starting to label the bags and distributing it to everyone. People then noticed that they did not have to spend time trying to peel stickers and this allowed them to “gain a rhythm” as the one high-school girl said. After that was successful, I started grabbing other peoples bags on the far sides and taking theirs a whole bunch at a time to the weighing stations. Learning curve effect and increased throughput also resulted as people starting hitting their sweet spot in doing repetitious tasks.
I then noticed the second bottle-neck of the process. Some weighing stations had too many bags while some had no work. I would then deposit our bags to the ones without work and redistribute accordingly. Also, when people noticed my carrying many bags, they also started to carry each others bags and transport them in batches cutting down the transport time. However, I still had to redistribute the bags from station to station once in a while because people didn’t pay attention that the 3 weighing stations had different speeds depending on the strength of the team there.
The third bottleneck I noticed was sometimes everyone would run out of cereal in their bucket at the same time and a line would form at the refilling station. Oftentimes the two guys working with the scoops at the refilling station were just standing there. Thus, I tried to time it so that when people were dropping off their bags and even if their bucket wasn’t totally empty I’d fill up the big buckets with cereal from the refill stations so that everyone didn’t go at once. My reducing the variability in the stochastic demand and off-synching the lines of buckets from going at once, the filling station was utilized more efficiently and bottleneck #3 was ameliorated.
All in all, I felt that I had a great time at the Greater Chicago Food Depository and met lots of nice people. I learned from the people and I also solidified my belief that if you ask people the right questions, they will see the right solution like you do. There is no need to give orders if you can get people to see the optimal solution by helping them see what you see. I also believe that by setting an example, others will follow if they notice superior results. I really hope I get to be involved in volunteering processes requiring teamwork on large scale coordination so that I can try to improve efficiency in the future.
I went to volunteer through Chicago Cares at the Greater Chicago Food Depository and I was surprised how many people were there. There were over 100 people from Boy Scouts to seniors. From kids who hijacked cars doing community service to families. The hodgepodge mix of people was very interesting and there were many activities. Some main ones included breaking down boxes, sorting food items, stacking boxes and putting cereal into 8 ounce packages.
I was in a group with Charlie, a high school teacher that taught freshmen, who noticed my Michigan Alumni shirt and told me he was a fellow alumni as well. As I worked there and chatted I noticed the differences in throughput per task depending on the skill level of the people at the table. This brought me back to my old operations management classes that I loved so much in b-school.
There were two lines of table with many big buckets on the table full of cereal. People with scoops were around the buckets and filling individual bags with approximately 8 ounces of serial. After they filled the bag they had to label the bag with a sticker. After this they would take the cereal bag to the weighing area where the bags would be weighed and bound up. When the big buckets were empty, we would take them to an area where two guys had large scoops would fill our bucket with cereal to take back to the assembly table.
I noticed that some people like Charlie were exceptionally fast at filling the bags with cereal. The hard part was that you had to keep the bag open with one hand while scooping the cereal in without having the small bag collapse on itself. Charlie was also standing on the far side and he would have to walk a further distance to deposit the bag at the weighing station. Some people were also better at peeling off stickers to label the bags because it was tough with our gloves on. I felt that specialization of tasks would be a better approach and that one person could take off their gloves to label the bags more efficiently. Charlie’s opportunity cost of time was much higher because he was the best at filling the bags with cereal whereas walking took everyone roughly the same time so Charlie was best utilized if he could continuously fill bags.
I created a two-prong steering strategy which I implemented to try to increase the efficiency of our units and nearby units. First, I dislike bossy people so I asked questions to get people to look at our operating efficiency. I said, “Do you guys think that it’s more efficient to use an assembly line approach or to assemble the whole unit ourselves.” Then we debated for a few minutes the merits and flaws with using an assembly line while we continued to do it the old way. We came to the consensus that the only bad part was that it was a bit more boring to specialize in one task. Thus, I then initiated tier two of my strategy by taking off one glove and starting to label the bags and distributing it to everyone. People then noticed that they did not have to spend time trying to peel stickers and this allowed them to “gain a rhythm” as the one high-school girl said. After that was successful, I started grabbing other peoples bags on the far sides and taking theirs a whole bunch at a time to the weighing stations. Learning curve effect and increased throughput also resulted as people starting hitting their sweet spot in doing repetitious tasks.
I then noticed the second bottle-neck of the process. Some weighing stations had too many bags while some had no work. I would then deposit our bags to the ones without work and redistribute accordingly. Also, when people noticed my carrying many bags, they also started to carry each others bags and transport them in batches cutting down the transport time. However, I still had to redistribute the bags from station to station once in a while because people didn’t pay attention that the 3 weighing stations had different speeds depending on the strength of the team there.
The third bottleneck I noticed was sometimes everyone would run out of cereal in their bucket at the same time and a line would form at the refilling station. Oftentimes the two guys working with the scoops at the refilling station were just standing there. Thus, I tried to time it so that when people were dropping off their bags and even if their bucket wasn’t totally empty I’d fill up the big buckets with cereal from the refill stations so that everyone didn’t go at once. My reducing the variability in the stochastic demand and off-synching the lines of buckets from going at once, the filling station was utilized more efficiently and bottleneck #3 was ameliorated.
All in all, I felt that I had a great time at the Greater Chicago Food Depository and met lots of nice people. I learned from the people and I also solidified my belief that if you ask people the right questions, they will see the right solution like you do. There is no need to give orders if you can get people to see the optimal solution by helping them see what you see. I also believe that by setting an example, others will follow if they notice superior results. I really hope I get to be involved in volunteering processes requiring teamwork on large scale coordination so that I can try to improve efficiency in the future.
posted by Ray at 12:18 PM
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