I had a hard time figuring out what to do because I’ve been polishing for a long time and have refined my actual polishing process to perfection. I mean the actual mechanics of polishing, how to apply the polish, what circular patterns and pressures to use, the type of rags and all that – perfected! And, I can complete a full polish faster than anybody! So, I started looking for what else about the process I could improve.Improve the polishing process
Introduce an improved process to enable quicker and more consistent polishing
I noted that we keep all of our polishes on a bench, not well organized. We also talk to the customers individually and present materials to them in a haphazard way (their choices, technical info about our polishes, and customer reviews, etc.), so customers were not all seeing the same things or hearing the same information, and it depended a lot on who they were talking to. I decided to build a nice new shiny rack in the front office featuring all of our polishes. I’ve created an all new brochure module integrated into this rack to feature each polish with all the technical info, and it sports an interactive interface so customers can browse user feedback and other technical info about all of our polishes in a side-by-side, interactive way. They can now see it all at a glance and it’s very convenient to use. It really makes this clear for the customer and it gives them access to directly contribute to product info, reviews, etc... I really like the new rack because now all our polishes are organized and I can track inventory, how much of which products we use, which polishes present problems and by who, and the public exposure is phenomenal.
I review this with my boss who is interested in assessing my performance. After showing him this new system and explaining the problems it addresses and how good it is, he says that’s not what he wanted and he did not even know it existed. That is odd because I've emailed him about it and he once asked me what's this rack out here and told me to move it to the other side of the office, and it's been there for months now. He said he wanted the polishing process to be improved. He said you used to squirt on some polish and rub it in, and asked if do you still do it that way today? Yes, he says, so nothing has changed.
Well, we know what failed goals mean, but honestly I think I give up. I don't think I can solve the problem because I really do not understand it. Let me also qualify that my boss has a bigger problem and that is getting stuff out the door fast enough and on schedule. The polishing process is at the tail end, so often that is when late items start getting some management focus, and of course they are always "held up" in the polishing department, because they are always late getting here or are incomplete, and we have to do odd contortions to accommodate a package, or just plain 'ol that's where they are when management started wondering why it's late, so it's automatically our fault.
I still need to solve this problem because if nothing else, that perception is real... It just seem like it should be my problem to solve. Am I missing something else?
p.s., I'm not really a polisher, but you know what I mean.