This week’s post is about continuous improvement with the border patrol.

Given everything that is going on in government, how can we reduce non-value add activities to improve the security of the border?

Why am I writing about this? 2 weeks ago, I had the privilege to be part of a prison ministry. I met one of the guards who was an X border patrol officer. I was complimenting him on the visual management at one of the Bonham Texas facilities. Even though he was not familiar with the terms of “Lean/Six Sigma” or “Operational Excellence,” he shared some areas of concern with the border patrol given the situation that the border patrol personnel face every day. I explained to him the concepts of what I do, and he shared the following areas in which I’d like to dedicate the next two weeks to my posts and blogs.

First, he shared with me that there’s many similarities within the management ranks of prisons and border patrol officers. He shared that the officers constantly recommend simple things that would fit with these TIMWOOD wastes. Like 5S, Visual management, and even how to improve with the simplest items in the replenishment within the supply chain.

Waste Comes in many forms, described as the “Seven Deadly Wastes”:

1. Transportation (moving back and forth from detention centers)
2. Inventory (supplies to capture and feed illegals waiting to be processed)
3. Motion (excess movement cost of fuel and fatigue on officers
4. Waiting (delays caused by shortages of lawyers and judges)
5. Over-production (processing more than courts can handle)
6. Over-processing (adding more cost than  budgeted)
7. Defects/Rework (doing the same job/task more than once)

• Skills (waste of not using offices input and knowledge)
• Safety can be affected by all the wastes

For example, one of his concerns was why leadership cannot understand the wasted time that was spent replenishing Ziploc handcuffs daily. In a value stream you would discover the wasted time, transportation (from the inventory center to the vehicles just to replenish an item portioned out based on availability. Too little inventory is just as big a waste as to much inventory. This is 1 of the 7 “Wastes” that creates a safety concern for these offices.

A simple Kanban(buffer) would resolve this waste. Although I cannot be sure about these facts until a value stream map can be built with factual data, we doe normally identify a lot of waste through a spaghetti diagram of wasted transportation. I have seen in factories where operators walk over 5 miles a day!   Border patrol walk and drive every day.  It would be interesting to capture waste in terms of fuel and delays getting illegals transferred and processed. 

The objective here would be to assist the border patrol in reducing the non-value-added activities that happen on a daily basis to allow them to perform their jobs efficiently. The productivity of the officers would go up and the culture of the border patrol would improve by seeing less turnover. The value stream map would also show the cost associated to having to constantly train new officers. The quantity of officers could be validated through Six Sigma tools based on doing a hypothesis of an improved and faster process. Predictability could be calculated based on the increased flow of illegals crossing our border. Reduction of fatigue would also increase the efficiency of the border patrol.

There are many tools on the Six Sigma side that would validate which of the lean tools should be used up front. In the meantime, by collecting data, 5S could be deployed immediately in almost every area of the border patrol function to improve efficiencies. This would allow management to see the effectiveness of short-term projects to start a long-term journey of continuous improvement.

With the amount of waste in the process the officers need leadership to understand that fatigue creates waste. Stay tuned to next week and in the meantime please go to my blog site, johnballis.net and make a comment on how you think you could help the border patrol eliminate non-value add daily bases.

Go to johnballis.net and I will publish your answer. Let’s stop the informational overload and start building real knowledge.