Member Article

Lean and 'Clean' at Lucketts

10 employees from Lucketts Travel in Fareham have recently completed Lean training for an NVQ Level 2 in Improving Operational Performance, delivered by Gosport-based Lean business specialists, Fedden USP, in conjunction with MIT Skills.

Lucketts is a family owned business established in 1926 and it now provides luxury coach hire, first class holidays and day trips. It has grown to become the largest coach operator on the south coast with over 380 employees and a fleet of over 160 modern, luxury coaches, buses and people carriers.

Keen to improve on the company’s operational efficiency, the 10 delegates from Lucketts undertook six days of training in Lean Tools and Techniques and were then split into two teams to each work on two improvement projects.

Team A looked at how to improve vehicle cleaning processes and how to improve efficiency in the workshop consumables area, while Team B investigated how they could reduce the time spent looking for items in the storage loft and improving the lost property process.

The application of S5 Lean techniques – Sort, Set, Shine, Standardise and Sustain - played a key part in the success of each project.

To improve the vehicle cleaning process, drivers were allocated cleaning duties by day and cleaners were employed through the night, resulting in the company only needing three full-time cleaners, cutting the annual cleaning costs by approximately £50k. An S5 audit of the cleaning cupboard was undertaken and the cupboard was completely re-stocked and is now monitored on a weekly basis.

To improve the way the company stores, stocks and displays consumable items, the workshop was emptied and an S5 audit undertaken to identify what needed to go back into the workshop and what was waste. New storage racking was also added and employees can now find items in a timely and efficient manner.

Excessive time was also being spent by employees trying to locate stock in the storage loft and after applying S5 techniques, the time to find an item was reduced to 20 seconds from over 5 minutes. It was a similar story in the lost property area which was unsafe and inefficient; six minutes were saved for every lost property enquiry after using S5 techniques.

Lucketts’ Managing Director Tony Lawman, commented:

“Operational excellence is key to our success, and I strongly believe that lean management training is an essential business ingredient, in not only investing in valuable team development, but positively challenges the way we do things, and opens our teams’ eyes to waste and inefficiency.

“It’s been fantastic to see our teams reflecting and looking at substantial ways we can generate greater productivity, improve quality for our customers, and create smoother operations – which ultimately results in cost reduction, and supports our continuous growth plans.”

Neil Fedden, owner and Managing Consultant at Fedden USP added: “It was an absolute pleasure for us to be working with Lucketts and the senior management team was very supportive of our work. The delegates were all very keen to learn the LEAN techniques and worked hard on the detail of their projects before presenting them to senior management – the company was a joy to work with.”

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This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Colin Bridgman .