I went to donate blood yesterday/ (UK readers, blood stocks are at 30% of where they should be at this time of year – so get down there…)

Anyway, when I first went in, there was a long queue with waiting times of around 40-50 minutes just to get onto the donating bed.

Went away, battled round the sales and came back to a much shorter queue.

Talking to the assistant about the queues. The laughable thing is, they know about the delays, the reasons for them AND the solution.

I won’t trouble you with the in’s and out’s of donating blood but suffice to say that the “flow” of “traffic” is roughly as follows.

1. Welcome & booking in (time spent by customer 2-3 minutes)

2. Short health questionnaire & blood test (2-3 minutes)

3. Donating bed actually giving blood (10-20 minutes)

4. Recovery on bed (2-3 minutes)

5. Recovery area (eating & drinking as much tea/coffee & biscuits as you can)

The assistant passed the time of day and we discussed the delays. We both observed that at that random moment in time, NO ONE was actually donating blood but people were still waiting.

Unless structured correctly, the longest activity will always cause the “bullwhip effect” – where long queues and delays alternative with periods of staff inactivity & standing around.

The silly thing was, the staff knew the solution and (because Sharp End Training have done some workflow work before – it made perfect sense to me)

Do YOU listen to you staff suggestions or do you just dismiss them ?

Do YOU have the monopoly on bright ideas ?

Who actually DOES the work ?

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