Frumherji

What are your recommendations for improving Frumherji's inspection and emissions-testing process? Apply concepts from the "Lean Service Machine" article, as well as your own experience, and explain your rationale. Divide your response into short-term solutions that would offer immediate improvements, as well as longer-term process improvements. Offer some insight about how the economic, geographic, atmospheric, social, and cultural environment in Iceland should be considered in selecting improvement strategies and implementing them.
One of their first problems is maintaining an even flow in their process environment. Due to the nature of the inspections and the cold weather in Iceland, they are more busy in the summer that they are in the winter. This makes it difficult to keep the right amount of employees. They should examine their historical data to determine how many employees they will need in order to meet expected customers during peak months. Frumherji should alter its inspection and testing process. The company should smooth out work flow by applying “takt” time concept wherein employees need to pace according to customer’s demand. During high customer demand, Frumherji should hire more part-time workers which can help eliminate idle time. Most of the waiting time is occurring in summer where employees take their vacations. Frumherji should try to work-around this issue by paying more wages in summer.
A second problem is too much time in check-in area. The receptionists at Base 1 had to serve customers who were there for other services as well. There could be delays in the reception area, even when there were no cars in the inspection hall. One way the issue can be resolved is to assign one or two receptionists to only do inspection customers and assign another employee to serve for other services. This avoids delays further down the process.

Since there were large number of vehicles being imported to Iceland, accommodation of such large vehicles is an issue Frumherji is facing. To combat, it should develop another separate doorway and lane for large vehicles.
Currently, first and second inspections are being done in the same lane. This creates an unnecessary waiting time even for those who wants to have a five minute check to verify that the necessary repairs had been completed. Frumherji should plan to separate the lanes for first as well as second inspections to avoid waiting time.
Frumherji can also improve its process by balancing loads amongst its employees. There are uneven workloads, resulting in unnecessary delays at different bases which is inefficient.

Long term solutions –
To increase productivity, Frumherji should start posting performance results which is lean manufacturing’s best practice. Employees should have some target to achieve so that they can strive towards achieving company’s expectations. The hourly productive rates should be posted on large white boards so that all employees could see when and where and therefore why performance was suffering. The employees should be rewarded as per their productive rates to keep the motivation going.