Dashboards: An answer to the eight deadly sins of waste

One of the most tangible results of a bad information management policy is waste - of time, effort and opportunity. Waste sucks productivity and efficiency out of a company begging the application of the principles of `lean manufacturing` to information management policies.

There are eight main types of waste that occur with an organisation: waste of motion, delay or waiting, conveyance (moving things around), correction (defects), over processing, inventory, over-production and knowledge disconnection or under-utilisation of resources.

Dashboards are an important tool in the management and conveyance of information to primary role players in a business, magnifying key areas where bottlenecks or inefficiencies occur within a company. They offer a means to easily visualise relevant information that is usually difficult to interpret or comprehend if presented in a report format, but through the ordering of this information for reporting purposes a secondary benefit - better information management - is achieved.

It is the presentation of disparate, inter-related information on a single screen or dashboard that delivers real benefit or value, as it allows users to better assess internal and external influences and business impacts, so enabling better decision-making. Dashboards provide an insight into performance and will quickly identify areas that divert a business from the path of profitability to waste.

There are three kinds of motion: actual work that adds value to the product, auxiliary work that supports actual work, and motion that creates no value. A good example of this last is the repeated manual effort needed to find, create, recreate or align information in order to produce a standard report. These manual efforts can be automated if good information management principles are applied -- such as standardisation, workflow and process integration -- and outputs are automated through the creation dashboards that also deliver updated reports to key role players when prompted to do so by the reaching of KPI thresholds.

Easy to spot, the waste of delay is clearly discernable when people are standing around waiting for something else to happen so they can complete their part of the process. An example is not being able to make a decision while waiting for a report to be compiled. This equates to a bottleneck and setting timeous processing and reporting deadlines will eliminate small delays that may initially seem insignificant, but add up to lost opportunity and productivity.

This happens when the things needed to do the job are not at hand so you either have to go get them or take them to where they`re needed. A typical example is access to applications or documents. Having to go and get them is delay by motion, both of which are waste themselves. A dashboard portal with single sign on eliminates this kind of delay.

This is self-explanatory. It always takes less time to do something right than it does to do it poorly and then correct it. The science to this is not to relieve people of responsibility - they should remain accountable for accuracy - but to automate tasks prone to error and ensure parameters are implemented that will identify irregularities.

To overcome over-processing, you need to carefully examine which of your processes, or products, are necessary. Much of this waste is administrative, such as needing numerous signatures to sign something off, but over-processing can also refer to unnecessary data that constantly features in a report - data that the end-user does not want or need. Overhauling report formats with the input of relevant role players will assist, as will checking relevance and knowing who owns the data and consolidating data layers and responsibilities.

Information is an asset but `fresh` information must be delivered quickly for a business to act on it and have a proactive rather than reactive result. Seen as inventory, information that a company can act on immediately has a limited shelf life. As it ages, it loses value other than adding a historical perspective. The more information that is tied up in `inventory`, the less you have to work with. Auditing and updating information makes it immediately and easily available to those who require it.

People like a little bit extra on the side - just in case. Overproduction, when it comes to information, leads to information paralysis, however. Storage is one problem, finding and accessing the information if it is badly stored (no dates, times, etc) is another. Of course, people will update and move this information around. A clearly defined information access and storage policy for each department or level of user will assist. The time and resources required to store and search for information can also be limited if information stored for general business use is trimmed down, with users storing non-critical or personal data on different systems.

The waste of knowledge disconnection / under-utilisation of resources Administrative disconnectedness within a company and or with suppliers and customers is another waste that contributes to inefficiency. Such disconnections are barriers to service and knowledge which can create excess costs, missed opportunities and frustration. For example, a manager may omit certain information because s/he thinks users will not know how to make use of, or interpret, it. This leads to vague answers and projections further down the line. Enforcing a minimum data set and putting sub-reports in place to support information drill-down will assist lower line managers.

Applying principles to overcome `waste` is prudent for companies that wish to hone their operations and processes - are there any that do not? So, rather than wasting time with yet another delay (or waste), implement a dashboard solution to identify your key areas of waste and bank on the benefits.