This is a real simple straight forward tip on how to dramatically increase your production. Remember when you were a little kid, your parents would hide Easter eggs in the house and you would get up and have to hunt all over the house to find them. Took some to time find them, didn't it? You think we would learn a lesson from this but we didn't.

One of the all time biggest time wasters and production thieves is the Easter egg hunt we go on when we want to find something in our workplace. The time we spend looking for everything under the sun is staggering. I use to do Productivity audits for companies, we would send in a team of people and just stand there and observe their production and operation procedures. What we would see would have been funny if it was not so costly for the owners.

One example that I have to tell you is this one, almost unbelievable and if I was not there to see it myself, would not of believed it was true. We were doing a productivity audit for a large electronics manufacturing facility in Ontario. ( the company has since gone out of business so I am no longer under the obligation not to mention my relationship with them ).

We started in the morning as the first shift started to come on the floor. I noticed someone had gone into the janitors room for something, had not found what he was looking for and then proceeded to go back and forth through this facility looking for it. I found out what it was when he finally found it, it was a broom that someone on the previous shift had used, failed to put it back where it belonged and just left it, the broom, at his workstation.

The new person, had found it about 40 yards away and then took it back to his station, proceeded to sweep out his area and guess what, just leaned the broom against the wall outside of his station and proceeded to go about his business.

During this time frame, I was able to see my guy go through his steps as well as still keep my eye on the janitor's room. While my guy was sweeping up his area, someone else had gone into the janitors room and also came out emptied handed. He started his search now, presumably for the broom. The second guy finally found the broom, propped up against the wall, outside of the original persons workstation, the second guy then took the broom even farther into the facility, proceeded to use it and yes, left it outside of his workstation.

The broom was now about 100 yards away from where it should have been and this is where it gets surreal. I was being paid to do this audit and was being paid a fair bit of money to do it. I was with the shift supervisor of this facility and he was standing right beside me, watching this unfold, much to his discomfort. I asked him how serious he was about getting an accurate picture of what was going on in his facility, he said very serious. I said prove it, he said how, I said get on the intercom and ask everybody in this area of the facility to stop what they were doing and just stand there. He gave me a long look and then he did it, he got on the intercom and said everybody in section A stop what they were doing and stand where they were.

Hen everybody heard this they thought it was a joke but it was an opportunity to just stand there and get paid so they did. I turned to the supervisor and said “let's see how many people are wondering around here looking for a broom”, the guy knew he was cooked.

We had already seen two people wandering around the place looking for a broom; I knew there would be more. We went up and down the aisles and asked the people who were standing out in the aisle, not at their work stations, what they were doing, 8 more people were looking for brooms. That means, in the first 30 minutes of this shift starting, 10 people were looking for one broom that was not even in the location where it should have been. Hundreds of dollars of man hours spent looking for a 10.00 broom.

A long explanation but one that I hope hammers home this principle. Start to do an audit on yourself, your operation and just stand back and watch and look at the times you and your people are guilty of going on an Easter egg hunt for things that are not where they should be.