Today I was watching the Nightly Business Report news piece about Japan Air Lines (JAL) effort on squeezing out waste from every aspect of their operations. Here it is - Japan Streamlines its Fuel Usage.
Very interesting piece that holds a lot of lessons for services and business processes also.
Japan Airlines Pilots are working with the U.S and its airports to approach the airport in a straight line and land directly instead of going on a circling pattern around the airport waiting to land. This way they can save fuel wasted in going into a waiting mode.
They are replacing aluminum sides of cargo holding contaiiners with fabric so that they are lighter and the air craft can consume less fuel!
They are reducing the weight of food containers as well as magazines on board so that they all weigh less!
Petroleum prices and Aircraft Fuel prices have all come down from the lofty heights they were even 6 months ago. But this kind of waste reduction pays off forever, irrespective of whether fuel prices warrant them or not!
This is the kind of obsessive waste reduction that can pay off in spades in services and business processes also! They can not only build a base of science that can help individual companies but also help them build this expertise that they can export and help other companies also elsewhere!
The Toyota Production System is freely shared by Toyota with anyone who wants to study it and apply it to their manufacturing operations. Toyota feels so comfortable that their methodology is in the DNA of their employees and their usage over decades and decades, that they don't feel possessive about these methods. They feel quite confident that none of their competitors can match them in what they have done so far!
Services and Business Processes also afford similar powerful operating advantages for companies that adopt them and use them diligently! Waste reduction in any form is so logical and consistent in its objectives that once they become a way of operating naturally!
Logic is the anatomy of thought - John Locke.
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