Over the holidays I moved to a new house, and moved State, not everyone’s idea of a holiday I know! This was move number 24 in my life so some may say that I’m an expert at the coordination, planning and organisation of a move and understand very well how this all plays out. So in the spirit of Lean I will use all my skills to make sure everything is done in the proper order and it will all go swimmingly well! I mean in my head everything is a process that drives the maximum value for the customers with the minimum amount of effort, sounds simple right?
To set us off on the right foot I engaged three well known and established interstate removalist who came to the house with their iPads that enabled them to count all the pieces of furniture and they even measured some of the pieces with their iPhone app to make sure they got the dimensions right. I was super impressed with the digital technology and thought that this system would reduce the amount of variation. However, after the third quote I realised that the dimensions of the complete load were all different, how can that be? Oh well, they know more than me, lets go with the cheapest.
The first thing we do is recognise that we can probably throw out some “stuff” that we don’t need and has been sitting around the house for way too long, and we haven’t used it since the last move and Sort out the rubbish, so goodbye to the old tv’s, tables, and junk stored in the garage. Then we start to Set things in order for the packers to make it easier for them, and start to clean and Shine everything inside and out…(See the Lean 5S thinking playing out here).
So the day of the move is on us, the removalists arrive and create this frenzy of activity. Boxes are made, things are being wrapped and stuffed into boxes as I watch before my very eyes my home being dismantled. It’s quite disconcerting watching people wrap and stack your stuff with perhaps not the same care or thought you might take to perhaps do it yourself. I calm myself in the knowledge that they are the experts and know what they are doing.
About 12:00 my husband lights up the barbie and decides that these guys need to have something to eat, he thinks if we look after them they will look after us, so we sit with them over lunch and learn more about their lives. The leader of the group wants to have a chat with me after lunch as he explains that he thinks the load is not going to fit in the truck…..Are you kidding me, what ar you going to do? Oh let’s wait and see I will know more later in the afternoon….my spidey sense goes off the radar!
As the afternoon progresses and the truck gets fuller, the leader is looking more and more concerned. I ask him how is it going and he tells me it isn’t going to fit. So what are you going to do? Oh I don’t know, we only quoted you for one truck? What sort of answer is that, we are going to have stuff left over. Well you will need to ring the Manager, who was the same guy who came with his digitally enhanced equipment to measure everything at the start. He was adamant that it should fit and that we must have added more furniture since he was there, which was the complete opposite we had taken three truck loads to the tips so there was significantly less that what he quoted! So I asked him what are you going to do, he then told me he would have to get back to me.
Three hours later as the guys are ready to close the doors of the truck with about 5 cubic meters of left overs and still no response from the “Manager” I am starting to lose my cool! What the hell are we going to do with the left over, uh, I don’t know was the response. After many more phone calls to Manager he determined that they will pick it up the next day but it would cost more. So I am now paying additional for your inefficient process that gave me an incorrect quote for your services. This is just poor services but what choice do I have, I need all my goods at the new house, I can’t leave them behind.
We hit the road for our 8 hour drive to the new home, excited to be making the move, anxious about leaving our stuff behind, but hopeful everything will sort itself out at the other end. Not so fast! The phone rings and the Manager is telling us that the truck has been delayed and will not arrive on the Friday but will now arrive on the Saturday because the interstate team is overloaded. One of my pet hates is crappy handoffs and the hand off between the interstate teams is proving to be painful. So they put us up in a hotel for the night and the truck arrives the next day.
