Cycle time is an important metric to understand because the impact of slower cycle time is often felt on employees’ motivation and their belief that submitted ideas will be implemented promptly - or at all.
Our customers know how important it is to be able to monitor the cycle time of their improvement efforts, so several of them requested that a Report be added to enable their leaders to do so, and we were happy to oblige!
The Location Cycle Time Report lets you monitor how long Improvements are spending in each status on a per location basis. That means you can check in on each Location and see how many days on average it takes an Improvement to move out of one status and into the next.
What should you look for in the Cycle Time Report?
The Cycle Times report raises red flags, making it easy for you to hone in on bottlenecks. Keep an eye out for:
- Locations with lots of improvements stuck in the New status.
This may indicate that leaders in that location are failing to respond quickly and assign those Improvements. Employees respond best to timely feedback; if they’re waiting weeks or even months to get feedback, they’ll probably assume that improvement is not a priority and will be less likely to submit their ideas later.
- Locations with lots of improvements waiting for approval to get out of Resolution Submitted status.
This is another indication that leaders in that location might need coaching. You don’t want your employees getting discouraged by the apparent lack of interest in their work if you want them to stay engaged in your organization’s improvement culture. Coach these leaders to promptly review and respond to improvements when a resolution is submitted.
- Locations with lots of improvements spending a long time in the Overdue status.
By allowing employees responsible for Improvements to let them become Overdue and stay that way for a long time, leaders are sending a signal that improvement is not a priority and that people are not expected to complete their Improvements on time. If people feel like their leaders don’t take improvement work seriously enough to care if it’s not being done on time, why would they take it seriously themselves?
In addition, this status triggers notifications; the longer an Improvement is overdue, the more escalations of that notification take place. Leaving Improvements in the Overdue status results in regular emails telling people what they probably already know - that their work is Overdue - which trains them to ignore email notifications from KaiNexus and therefore makes KaiNexus a less effective continuous improvement platform as a whole.
What can you do on the Cycle Time Report?
We know that the best reports let you customize what you see by sorting and filtering to find the information that matters most to you. That's why the new Cycle Time report lets you:
- Filter by Originating or Responsible location. “Originating” means that only Improvements that were authored by someone in a location will be included in that location’s data set. “Responsible” means that only Improvements which were implemented by someone in a location will be included in that location’s data set.
- Include only certain locations on the Report. Select the locations you want to include from the network location chart along the left side of the Report. This is helpful if you only want to check in on locations which you manage.
- Filter by Level Type. Add the Level Types by which you want to filter in the “Level Type” drop-down menu near the top of the Report. This lets you understand all work going on around a functional area such as factories or hospitals.
The Cycle Time Report is a great tool for looking for bottlenecks in your improvement efforts. We’d love to hear about how you’re using this Report!