A tangled process, drawn straight
Operations and process improvement · Bicester
Most processes on a working floor were never designed in one go. A check was added after a mistake, a walk was added when the stock moved, a form was kept for a customer who has since gone — and the work now runs like a knotted string.
JB90 SOLUTIONS walks that string end to end, counts it in minutes and metres, and redraws it with the people who do the work until it runs in a line again. We work in warehouses, workshops and offices around Bicester, and we plan moves into new units so the first shift runs on day one.
2 · The walk
Walk it before anyone redraws it
We start where the work arrives and follow it to where it leaves — the goods-in door, the order screen, the first bench — with the people who do it, on an ordinary shift. The trade calls this going to the gemba, the place where the work is done. Nothing gets redrawn from a meeting room.
On the walk we time steps, count what is waiting and trace the route that people and goods actually travel on a copy of the floor plan. Drawn out, that trace is usually the first knot anyone can see: a spaghetti of lines where the plan assumed one.
Where work waits
Trolleys, totes and trays standing between steps, and for how long.
Who walks, and how far
The route each role takes in a typical hour, drawn on the plan and turned into minutes.
Double handling
Anything picked up, put down and picked up again before it moves on.
Searching
Minutes spent finding a location, a tool, a label or the person who knows.
Rework
Steps done twice because the first pass was wrong or incomplete.
Hand-offs
Each point where the work changes hands, and what travels with it.
Start where the work arrives. Follow it to where it leaves.
3 · The count
Count the minutes before the people
420 min=25,200 s÷600 units=42 s
A baseline is a handful of plain numbers: how long each step takes for one unit, how much work waits between steps, how many units leave per hour, and how the day's demand arrives. We take them on the floor with a stopwatch and a tally, over enough cycles to see the spread as well as the middle.
Set against demand, they give the takt time — the working time in a shift divided by the units wanted in it. Takt is the beat the floor has to keep. A step slower than the beat builds a queue; a step much faster waits. We time the work, never the person, and the team sees the numbers first.
4 · The bottleneck
Find the step that sets the pace
Every flow has one step slower than the rest. Work piles up in front of it, the steps after it stand idle, and adding people anywhere else changes nothing: the output is whatever that one step can do.
Finding it usually means looking for the queue. Fixing it starts with asking why, five times if need be, and sorting the causes on a fishbone — method, materials, layout, equipment, information, people — before anything moves. A fix is tried on one shift and kept only if it held.
- Goods in31 s
- Put-away36 s
- Pick57 s · queue forms here
- Pack40 s · waits for Pick
- Despatch24 s
5 · The line
Redraw it with the people who run it
The new flow is designed with the team that will work it, on brown paper first: the current state, then the future state, step by step, with hand-offs and waits counted. Standard work is written short and visual — a job aid at the point of use rather than a binder in an office.
Then it is tried small: one zone, one shift or one product family. What works is rolled out and trained; what does not is changed before it spreads. The same method holds off the floor, where order entry, approvals and onboarding knot in exactly the same way.
A straight line is agreed first, then pegged out.
6 · Holding the line
Holding the line after we leave
A redrawn process drifts unless someone looks at it every day. Before we hand over, a short huddle runs at the start of each shift with a few measures in sight — on time, right first time, safe, in balance — and the actions it raises have owners and dates.
- The measures, owned by your team
- The standard work and the job aids
- A check back at 30, 60 and 90 days
We work from Bicester across the M40 and A41 belt — OX26, OX25, OX27, OX5, OX16 and NN13 — and as far as Oxford and Aylesbury. If something on your floor is knotted, the next step is a morning on it.
7 · A first walk
Book a morning on your floor
A first floor walk is one morning on an ordinary shift. Pick a free morning on the calendar: Monday to Friday, from the second working day after today to three weeks ahead, one walk a morning, and a morning someone has already asked for shows as taken.
Before booking, the knot check asks eighteen questions about waiting, hand-offs, rework, searching and double handling, and draws your answers as a string, knotted where something happens on most shifts. Attach the map, and the walk starts where you marked it tightest.
Once it is booked, the walk has a page of its own. There you choose what the morning covers: the areas, the lines to follow, up to three questions, and whether you want walk notes, a takt sheet or a setting-out plan. The running order is laid out from your shift start, and the lot prints as an engagement summary kept with the booking.
Pick a morningDraw your knot mapWhat a walk can cover
Sent a request already? Manage your floor walk with its reference and email. Questions first? Before you book.
How the map draws an answer
- Most shifts is drawn as a knot
- Now and then is drawn as a loop
- Not that I have seen is drawn as a straight run
- Can't say yet is drawn as a gap in the string