Lean Tools in Logistics – How the Performance Dialog success started
Erich Pelikan – 11.11.2024
When sorting the material for Lean in Logistics I came across the picture below, which tells the story of our very first Performance Dialog in DHL Global Forwarding 13 years ago. It was piloted in a small Control Center unit collecting PODs (proof of delivery) for a key customer. The customer wanted 96,5% of PODs in his system within 24 hours, the remaining 3,5% in 72h. The team was somewhere between 85% and 90% for the 24h goal. Maybe a Performance Dialog providing transparency to everyone in the team could improve collaboration and performance?
We started with a very simple board (picture below shows the very early stage), trained the team leader and explained the flow of a Performance Dialog to the team in a dry run session. In just 4 weeks after introduction of the tailored Performance Dialog they reached 98% in 24h. I still remember the day the team got back to us with cheer and happiness.
Following this very first proof of concept we conducted another 20 pilots in different divisions and areas, e.g. with teams in Customs Declarations, Sort and Ramp in the big hubs, entire shifts in Freight cross docks and one even in Sales in India. It worked, and across the board significant performance improvements could be achieved. Even better, the PD’s (as we call them) generated action items for improvement activities and contributed a lot to employee engagement. Shopfloor management at its best.
Now, more than 13 years later, all DHL Divisions are using it. Thanks to a multitude of passionate colleagues around the globe that picked up the PD approach, tailored and improved it and took it to their management teams or included it in the Certfied trainings, PD’s have become the way we work at DHL. We improved the boards, added electronic versions for distributed teams, continued with virtual versions during Corona, integrated OHS by means of the Safety Cross and extended the usage to areas like Security or Customer Service.
We never expected that it would go that far when we first came across this simple yet powerful approach.
[This article was first published on Linkedin in June 2023]
