This morning, I wrote a physical check and placed it into a physical envelope. I hand-wrote the addresses on the envelope and even put a physical stamp on it. I will mail it, when I take my semiweekly trip to the mailbox. This is the first time I can remember doing this in a few years. The party recieving my payment is forcing me to follow this inefficient business process of mailing a physical payment to them. All I can think is how this used to be the norm and now how ridiculously inefficient it appears.
When objectively judging the efficiency of this process, I started by first measuring two things, the Work-in-Process (WIP) and the Average Completion Rate (ACR).
Little's Law
This law provides an equation for relating Lead Time, Work-in-Process (WIP) and Average Completion Rate (ACR) to any process. The law states: Lead Time = WIP (units) / ACR (units per time period). The idea is to have the lowest lead time as possible. Lower lead times means less waste.
Am I the only geek out there who does this? Where do you see inefficient processes that could benefit from a more lean approach?