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Dead Connection

4 April, 2011 by James Lawther 1 Comment

A lady in America lost her father to cancer. His old telephone supplier are chasing her for the £300 he owes them (since he died), despite the fact that she has no legal obligation to pay. She is, understandably,  a tad upset. Innovative things that they could have done instead: Apologised profusely and cancelled the […]

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement Tagged With: cost of poor quality, customer focus, information technology, innovation, service design, service improvement

Tickets Please

13 November, 2010 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

I use the train a lot, and I buy a lot of tickets.  The guys on East Midlands Mainline are very determined that I pay for all this travel. 1.  They have ticket checking barriers at all entrances to the platforms to make sure I have a ticket. 2.  They have train “managers” on the […]

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement Tagged With: bureaucracy, complexity, East Midlands Trains, poor service, revenue generation, service design

The Monument

3 November, 2010 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

In the manufacturing world they use the term “monument” to refer to any piece of equipment that is too big for its purpose. They are expensive pieces of capital equipment that drive massive economies of scale at a local level but fundamentally mess up the total system. Because of their inflexibility they must be “fed” […]

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement Tagged With: capital investment, graphical user interface, information technology, interactive voice response, service design, service improvement

The Dongle

15 September, 2010 by James Lawther 1 Comment

I am working away for a couple of days. It is easy to do now that the dongle has been invented, that marvellous piece of equipment that links me to the internet and the world.  I can communicate with anybody. “Dongles” are so good I have four of them, one for my personal lap top, […]

Filed Under: Blog, Operations Analysis Tagged With: complexity, information technology, service design, waste

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