I'd like to go back to the well on this one and discuss our dry cleaning process at Crystal Cleaners in regards to team organization. Since I have not been a part of the dry cleaning process for some time since transferring to UIUC, I will discuss the system in its current form, without me in it.
At this time, the system could be considered a simple "One Boss" arrangement. My sister, Emily, oversees all business operations, including all facets of the dry cleaning process. Underneath her, the system is broken up into smaller sectors: Dry Cleaning, Laundering, Dry Cleaning Pressing, Shirt Pressing, Sorting/Processing, Customer Service, and Transportation. These sectors perform tasks largely individually, with few overlaps in production, so high levels of communication between sectors is not always required. They also all answer to Emily directly and refer to her with any questions or concerns. Of course, this does not mean one sector can function completely freely of all others. They are all facilitated by one another and require one another to perform their tasks properly in order to perform their own tasks.
Here I will give a quick synopsis as to how the system works and what each sector's tasks are:
-The Dry Cleaning and Laundering Teams arrive before the store opens, ready the machines and clothing items, and begin washing/cleaning all items.
-The Shift Clerk (Customer Service) arrives to open the store to customers at 7 am.
-The Shirt Pressing Team arrives at 7:30 am, when the first loads of shirts are finished in the washers, and begins pressing. Shirt pressing is a three-part process: Shirts first go on a buck press on which the body of the shirt is pressed. Then, shirts are inspected for any unwanted creases or imperfections the buck may have left and imperfect areas are pressed by a hot head press. Finally, shirts are brought to a basic iron where sleeves are ironed and the shirts are readied for processing.
-The Dry Cleaning Team arrives at 8;00 am, when the first load of dry cleaning is finished being cleaned, and begins pressing. Dry cleaning presses is essentially broken up into three categories: Trousers are pressed on a "legger" press and touched-up by a pant-topper press. Jackets are pressed on a cushioned utility press and steamed-out by a "Suzie" machine. Finally, all other miscellaneous dry cleaning/laundering items are pressed by hand on a utility press and Suzie if need be.
-The Processing Team arrives at 9;00 am and begins inspecting finished items for any mistakes and then places items on the line with their order ticket. As orders are completed, items are bagged and place with in a designated area with other orders from that particular location. Crystal dry cleaning is placed on our rotating rack for customer pick-up.
-All dry cleaning from our drop stores are loaded and transported to those locations. While at each location, incoming dry cleaning from the day is picked up and returned to Crystal.
-Team members leave after their tasks for the day are finished and the day's work is completed.
This system seems to be successful as of now and it may be because it includes several of Katzenbach and Smith's distinguishing characteristics of high-quality teams.
-The system allows each team to handle its own matters throughout the day. Granted, she has taught each team how shes wants things to be done and what ways she feels will produce the greatest efficiency, but she does let each team go about its business without breathing down their necks constantly.
-Each sector's tasks have been broken down into measurable goals. As you may have been able to tell, much of the dry cleaning process involves labor, machine utilities, and other variable costs. Therefore, our system is centered around been as efficient as possible. Therefore, we have employed the use of time and quality-measured performance goals to ensure that work is being done in a timely manner.
-The size of the system may seem big from my explanations, but actually, there are only about 10 people in the system. most of the teams I mentioned earlier are actually made up of just 1 or 2 people.
-Expertise may be a field in which we are lacking a bit. Mainly, since employees are only performing tasks relating to their sectors, they don't carry much expertise in the other dimensions of the system. However, there are a handful of team members that do have experience in multiple fields which comes in handy when someone misses a day of work or one particular sector has more work to do than normal.
-Working relationships is another field in which we aren't as strong as we could be. Team members within the same sector have often become quite close as they are working toward the same immediate goals and are also in close proximity to each other. However, since sectors don't often overlap, there is little need to develop close relationships with those outside one's sector. Don't get me wrong here though. It is a small business and everyone knows everyone, but as far as interpersonal communication, it is not necessarily vital to the success of the system.
-The final piece is the one that intrigues me most of all. In a remedial labor-driven business like ours, it is incredibly difficult to get our employees to become committed to the business. This problem can present itself in many ways. An employee can work slowly because they don't care about being efficient. They could skimp out on quality as far as pressing because making sure items are perfect can be a pain and they don't care about perfection. Or they could be careless when processing items, which leads to customers' items being placed with the wrong orders or being lost altogether. This has been our biggest problem since we started at Crystal and our main strategy to prevent it is to simply try to make Crystal a pleasant place to work so that employees enjoy being there (as much as they can at leas) and to involve them in the decision-making process so that they feel they are truly a part of our business because in truth, they are. This strategy has had some success lately. Our current team includes some of the hardest working and more efficient employees I've seen since we've started. And believe me, I've seen a lot. In this type of industry, turnover is something you see quite a bit.
"-The size of the system may seem big from my explanations, but actually, there are only about 10 people in the system. most of the teams I mentioned earlier are actually made up of just 1 or 2 people." It would have been good had you posted this at the top. It would make the following more consistent with B&D. The way you wrote it, until then, it didn't seem as if the entire organization should be viewed as a single team.
ReplyDeleteOne of the other things that you might have commented on is whether the model for this sort of business, in general, has been the same for some time. Since from a previous post I know you took over a different business, was there model the same before the takeover?
The place I go used to be a cash only business with paper ticketing that was hand written, but computerized and embraced credit cards 5 - 10 years ago. I have no way of know whether there were any changes made in the back where most of the people work, but the change up front (they also repainted the place with a different look) were pretty obvious.