Lessons from Bookcases

Across our Learning Federation, the mantra is to be continually evaluating practice, looking for marginal gains and trying to be better today than we were yesterday.

One company that has a rigorous approach to reviewing and refining processes to ensure constant improvement is IKEA.

Constant Tweaks
In 2010, for example, Ikea rethought the design of its Ektorp sofa and made the armrests detachable.

That helped halve the size of the packaging, which halved the number of lorries needed to get the sofas from factory to warehouse, and warehouse to shop. And that lopped a seventh off the price.

The Bang Mug
IKEA changed the height of their iconic mug when it realised it could make slightly better use of the space in its supplier's kiln, in Romania.

And tweaking the handle design made them stack more compactly - more than doubling the number you could fit on a pallet, more than halving the cost of getting them from the kiln in Romania to the shelves in the shop.

Billy Bookcase

It has been a similar story with the Billy bookcase. It does not look like it has changed much since 1978, yet it costs 30% less. That is partly due to constant, tiny tweaks in both product and production method.

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• What systems and processes do you have that could be refined?
• Is there something that is good, that with a tweak, could become great?
• Do staff waste time on low impact tasks that could be made more efficient?
• How often do you purposefully audit and review the systems and processes used?