Articles

How ‘one-piece-flow’ can transform your practice

Lean production techniques can significantly increase the efficiency of your practice, as well as helping improve the quality of your customer service.

One of the key ideas in lean production systems is ‘one-piece-flow’. This is where as one person finishes their step in a process on a job, the person carrying out the next step is ready for the job. Ideally, it means that one job flows through seamlessly without delay.

The opposite of one-piece-flow is ‘batching’. This is where one person completes their task on multiple jobs and then delivers this batch of jobs to the next person in the process. It means that jobs will sit waiting until the whole batch is completed.

There is plenty of evidence that one-piece-flow is the optimal approach. Yet, despite the strength of this argument, batching is very hard to get rid of and is an intuitive process for most people, as shown by this very simple demonstration.

You have ten newsletters to stuff in envelopes for mailing to your clients. Would you:

a) Fold all ten newsletters, then stuff all ten newsletters in envelopes, then seal all ten newsletters and then stamp them?

Or would you:

b) Fold one newsletter, stuff it in an envelope, seal that envelope and stamp it, then move on to the second newsletter to repeat the process, and so on through all ten newsletters?

From experience most people would take the first approach – they would batch.

There is a great video available which demonstrates and compares these two options. In the demonstration it takes three minutes and forty-seven seconds to complete this process using the batch technique. This compares to two minutes and forty-six seconds using the one-piece-flow technique.

That 61 second difference equates to a 27 percent advantage for one-piece-flow over batching – a significant advantage.

So what does this exercise teach us?

• In the one-piece-flow technique there is no wasted time – there is only one pick up at the beginning of the process and one put down at the end.
• In the batching technique the job is put down after each stage and picked up again at the next stage. That means there are 60 extra occasions of put down/pick up.
• The one-piece-flow process means one job is processed at a time – ensuring less work-in-progress so jobs are completed more quickly. It means the first newsletter is completed when only ten percent of the total job is completed.

How can one-piece flow help in your practice?

Lets look at three key processes – processing annual accounting jobs, reviewing and billing.

Processing annual accounting jobs traditionally involves batch processes. Your client provides you with their annual records and your team then processes these. And you usually have multiple batches of accounting jobs requiring processing at much the same time.

However, by using The BankLink Service, your practice is provided with a valuable opportunity to implement one-piece-flow. You can process your clients’ records continuously throughout the year to tie in with the BAS cycle by receiving their transaction data electronically on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.

This means the end-of-year processing required is greatly reduced, and you can produce more financial statements and tax returns soon after year-end. That’s good for both your client relationships and cash flow.

Most people who review jobs let them accumulate and then process them as a batch. This unfortunately leads to slow turnaround as reviews accumulate.

Team members then start on other jobs (causing blow-outs in work-in-progress) and there are delays as they have to refamiliarise themselves with the job again before starting on any rework. This also encourages interim billing – an extra wasteful step that clients find frustrating.

To overcome these issues, reviews should ideally be completed once they are received. This is why we recommend all reviewers set aside dedicated review time each day in their calendars. If there is a review to be done that day it gets done in that time.

In most practices billing is another batch process. Partner or Directors are taken out of circulation for a day or two while they finalise their month’s billings, and in the meantime, other tasks (such as reviews) are accumulating for them.

Instead, it is much better for billing to occur as jobs are completed during the month. And better again if as much as possible of this process is carried out by team members with minimal input from Partners or Directors. Billing then becomes part of the flow of completing the job – and not a batch process added on at the end.

These negative effects are eliminated when jobs are managed following the one-piece-flow methodology. While batching is the intuitive response of most people, one-piece-flow methods like The BankLink Service allow you to be more efficient and provide better service to your clients.

It is a compelling method with considerable advantages.

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