By Niraj Goyal and Parvez Vandrewala 

Background     Newspaper companies have a unique supply chain – an external customer is pulling at either end of the chain. The chain begins with the “Advertiser” and ends at the “Reader”. The former is the source of the bulk of the revenues and demands the facility to book an ad as late as possible. The latter provides the raison d’etre for the advertiser to advertise and demands the paper at a fixed time with the “latest news”. There are therefore two parallel legs to the supply chain – from ad to reader and from event to reader.

       Processors working in both the legs are therefore under tremendous pressure to shorten their cycle times. The work described in this case study relates to the advertiser to reader leg of the supply chain and was carried out in a city newspaper in of India’s large Metros.

The Task          With such a well-defined CTQ attribute the task was clearly set out by the senior management – reduce the cycle time in the advertiser to reader leg of the supply chain by 40% using any method suitable.

The advertiser to reader supply chain consists of the following main links:

                                                                                                               Start time of Activity

Advertiser contacts Organisation and gives Ad ……………………..............................  t0

Ad  is then booked, scheduled and paginated – located in the newspaper page

Completed pages are sent to press …………………………………. ..............................t1

Newspaper printed ……………………………………………………................................ t2

Delivered to Distribution centres ……………………………………................................. t3

Delivered to Reader ……………………………………………………............................... t4

The Phase 1 task was to reduce (t1 – t0) from 2.5 hours to 1.5 hours i.e. 40%.

The Method     The author chose to use Lean-Six Sigma techniques to achieve the goal. The challenge was to effectively use the techniques in a group which had no exposure to them and was not contemplating any integrated Lean Six Sigma training.

The Story:        a team consisting of key members in each link of the segment of the supply chain being considered was constituted. Weekly team meetings were agreed.
During the first two meetings the basic concepts to be used were introduced through simple examples and experiential exercises, case studies and live examples:
    
      -          Quality is customer Delight

-          Customer needs – product quality, service, delivery and cost

-          Variation and sigma

-          Structured problem solving steps – the author favours a seven step method similar to DMAIC

-          Lean – value stream mapping, reducing non-value added work and stages, Batch to flow and demand-pull processes.

-          Internal Customer

-         Poka Yoke – foolproofing the process

-         Control Charts

Simultaneously preliminary data gathering and analysis was begun. The goal was achieved using the seven-step problem solving methodology and the narrative from this point on follows in that sequence.

 Desired status             Processing time from Ad to Pages shoot to press 1.5 hours

1.2.1     Define the Metric                    
What are the start and end points of the Supply chain being considered? The start time was defined as the time of receipt of the last ad from the customer i.e. the time at which the Ad booking desk closed shop. On closer examination it was found that there were 3 sources of Ads with different “Desk Closing Times” which are summarised below:

            The metric was defined as T = (Page shoot time – Page shoot deadline) measured in minutes. For 99.7% on time delivery Average+3 sigma of T would have to be less than zero.
The team contended that since there was a weekly pattern of incoming load with Tuesdays and Thursdays being heavy there would always be variability. To neutralise this point the 7-day moving average of T (say t) was agreed to be the metric to be used.

            1.2.2     Measure the current state: the closing time of the desk could not be delayed by an hour without delaying the despatch of the newspaper by an equivalent amount. So the current state was computed by measuring the delay compared to a notional 5:30 pm despatch time rather than the actual deadline of 6:30 pm. The first results were as follows;

Average t = 72 minutes

Ave+3sigma of t  = 267 minutes

The problem was defined:  reduce 267 to <0.

Step 2  Analyse the Problem – Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?
The process stage timings were ascertained from the group and were as follows:

The 1600-1630 period was processing the last batch of ads received. At 16:30 the material was “paginated” i.e. arranged on the newspaper pages using a software and given for manual corrections, finishing to the pagination operator. Clearly to achieve the objective we would have to reduce the time of pagination.
To ascertain why pagination took 2 hours the group responded that there were several reasons, of which the three major ones cited were – corrections, delayed receipt of ad material for a booked ad, and last minute update instructions. It was also suggested that it might help to release version 1 to pagination in an incomplete form so that pagination could start working on it to remove errors etc even as ads were still coming in and being scheduled. Accordingly it was agreed to give pre final versions starting at 1530 instead of 1630. It was decided to observe the process in detail to find the activities that were taking time during pagination.

Steps 3- 4         Countermeasure – Test the ideas 

It was evident that pagination was being done several times to correct errors made upstream, or ads being accepted and inserted after the deadline. Root cause/countermeasure analysis yielded simple operating SOPs often fool proofed with IT enhancements. Since all problems do not occur on the same day the process was observed 4 times. During each cycle the countermeasures suggested for problem noticed earlier were tested and “ground in” until they became practices and new problems that consumed time at the pagination stage or caused repeat cycles were isolated and killed as enumerated in the table below:

 Step 5  Check the results

The improvements were tracked regularly and the results began to show rapid improvements. The team started to measure itself against the self imposed deadline of 5:30 pm instead of 6:30 pm.

In 9 weeks of continuous implementation of the countermeasures the following improvements were clocked in the delay from 5:30 with the fool-proofing IT software modifications still not 100% in place.  

The average time of processing had been reduced by 60 minutes – however the 99.7% on time delivery parameter (average + 3 s) though much improved was still unacceptable.

 The team’s mindset had however changed – from “This is not possible” to “We can do it” and they clearly recognised that with continuing improvement effort and the IT changes implemented the target was achievable.

Step 6  Standardise the control
SOPs were prepared and a control chart was introduced to track and control progress on a regular basis and it was heartening to see the progress continued by the team as shown below:

Step 7  QI story
The Quality Improvement Story was prepared and presented to management.

Grinding the Practices
In the authors experience sustaining the change is often much more difficult than achieving it. The approach recommended is continuous improvement – “If you do not improve, you deteriorate”. Towards achieving this a line team was set up to plot the control chart every day and analyse the root cause of any deterioration, however small and implement a countermeasure to kill it.
This practice resulted in further improvements and in the next 6 weeks the performance improved further as Indicated below:

 The Ave+3 sigma of delay had been brought to 12 minutes early from 267 minutes delayed. The deadline of receiving ads from the advertisers was now relaxed to 5:00 pm instead of 4:00 pm. This move is expected to yield additional revenues of Rs 2-3 million per year.

The dramatic improvement achieved – both in reducing average and variability of delay - is highlighted by the following graph where 0 means on time, and > 0 means delay:

 Conclusion At the end of the project the team was asked what they had learned. The list reads like a key points summary from Lean – six sigma:

-          Distributing work

-     Keep no backlog

-     Teamwork

-     Making work flow

-     Pre-preparation

-     Observing Time deadlines

-     Preventing errors

-          Doing it right the first time

 Encouraged by this project the company now plans to reduce turnaround in the printing and delivery segments of the supply chain. 

About the Authors:
Niraj Goyal has 25 years of experience with multinational companies in various operating roles, among them operations director of Cadbury India Ltd., where he was among the leading implementers of the quality movement. He is the founder of Cynergy Creators Private Ltd. Mr. Goyal consults in India, the United States and Southeast Asia with manufacturing, IT, media and financial services industries. He specializes in training and facilitating the implementation of the techniques of Six Sigma-Lean and TQM. Several other real life case studies can be accessed on his website www.nirajgoyal,cjb.net
Mr. Goyal can be reached at nirajgoyal@vsnl.in

Parvez Vandrewala heads the classifieds advertisement business, and the Sales Support function, which includes Advertising Operations where this project was implemented. He has 17-years experience with a Multinational FMCG company, Hindustan Lever Ltd, in various Sales, Sales operations and CRM assignments. He can be reached at parvezv@gmail.com