The next time you are in your facility stop and take a look around and watch all the movement.  As you do this look for processes that appear to require a lot of travel and then measure the distance and the number of times throughout the day the travel is repeated. 

As a rule of thumb, each meter of movement is equal to 1.5 seconds of time.  So multiply the distance by the number of times the travel is repeated and then multiply the result by 1.5 seconds to establish the total travel time required in a day.  Extend the result by the number of working days to get your total travel time for that process.  The result may be staggering.  Now ask yourself, what if we can cut that travel in half, how much time will we save?

Here are some metrics to consider:

• 5 min/day of extra movement is equal to 2.5 days of lost time per year.
• 30 min/day of extra movement is equal to 3 weeks of lost time per year.
• 1 hour/day of extra movement is equal to 1.5 months of lost time per year!

As you can see it does not take a lot of lost time in day to amount to a significant loss in productivity throughout a year!  How much extra revenue can you fill in that 1.5 months you are wasting?