Okay, I know I said I would write about batch sizes and measurement but I have to digress on this blog and come back to it next blog!

I recently spent a week in the beautiful country of Ireland, experiencing the culture and seeing family I hadn't seen in a long time. What a fantastic time! There were several things there though that I noticed that tie in with the theme of process improvement.

First, Poke Yoke! As many international travellers know, Ireland is one of the few places where the driver is on the right side of the car and drives on the left side of the road. Being a place with many tourists who drive the opposite, both the city of Dublin and the car rental agencies have tried to reduce the amount of accidents that happen. In Dublin, at the crosswalks, are reminders on the road to look the right for traffic. In my cousin's rental car were three!, yes three big stickers reminding him which side of the road to travel on! Simple things that many people are already aware of but not everyone is from around here! (plus I think my cousin still managed to go on the wrong side of the road at least once - only for about 5 seconds though!)

Second, Queing theory! Oh, boy but airports love queues. And the worst part is, you don't always know what they are for. Okay, my Canadianism kicked in when we hit Heathrow at 6am (1am back home). As we were switching airlines and terminals, we had to go through security, again, when we got to the new terminal. Once we were through there was a counter for the airlines we were now going on with a sign for transferring travellers. We didn't know what it was for, but being good Canadians, we lined up! Fortunately, after seeing another couple from Canada go to the desktop and leave without doing anything, we stopped them and discovered that since we already had our boarding pass we could skip the queue! But, there we were, Canadians in a line! Poor communication and signage though on the part of the airlines!

Customs is always the worst when it comes to queues. First of all, why have so few desks open when you know 10 international flights have all landed at basically the same time? Second, never jump queues - the line you are in will always be the slowest. Third, why is there a customs person at the front of the line looking at people's forms only to send us into lines? Last, have a floater or manager or someone around so that when a person passes out (not me!) due to the incredible heat in the queue, it does not take 3 customs officers to leave their lines for 10 minutes to deal with it!

Queues and roundabouts are flow streams. They need to allow people to move continuously to their objective with minimum interruption. When functioning well, it is a great experience, but when functioning/designed poorly, it is a nightmare!