Find and Remove Double Work

When a customer gives the same address twice, or two employees type the same order details into separate records, the cost is more than a few extra keystrokes. Each copy is a chance for a mismatch, a correction and an awkward call. Yet some apparently repeated steps are intentional checks: a second person confirming a payment, a safety inspection or a confidential record may be essential. The aim is to remove copying and needless requests while preserving independent controls that protect quality, security and customers.

Find a real example of repeated work

Follow five recent cases from request to completion. A transport business might trace a delivery booking from a customer's email through dispatch, driver instructions, proof of delivery and invoice. Ask every person who handles the case which information they enter, read, check or request. Note the location of each entry and whether a later person can see it. Look for a delivery address copied into two systems, a weight requested again at pickup, or proof of delivery emailed to someone who must retype it. Do not assume the formal procedure reflects what happens on a busy day.

Use a simple checklist: What information is first collected? Where is it recorded? Who needs it next? Is it copied, checked independently or requested again? Why does the second step exist? What happens if the first entry is wrong? Who is authorised to edit it? Which controls must remain? A drawing with arrows can help, but a numbered list will do. ASQ's process guidance suggests recording actual actions, decisions and people so that repeated steps and gaps can be understood in context.

Distinguish copies from controls

Copying an address from a dispatch email into a driver note may be replaceable with a shared record, assuming the driver can access it reliably. Confirming a dangerous-goods classification, payment destination or the right customer identity may require a separate authorised check. The difference lies in purpose. Ask whether the second person obtains independent evidence or merely repeats the first person's typing. If it is a control, document the risk it addresses before considering any change. If it is only a copy, identify one authoritative source and how changes will reach everyone who needs them.

Some apparent duplication is a symptom of poor trust in the original record. Staff keep private spreadsheets because the shared system is late, inaccurate or hard to access. Telling them to stop without fixing that cause can hide the problem. Ask which fields are missing, who maintains them and how long an update takes to appear. A change may require a clearer owner and an exception route, rather than new software. If personal data is involved, make sure access follows the need to perform the job and applicable local privacy rules.

Test one entry point

Choose a frequent, low-risk piece of information. For a delivery business, that might be a customer's loading-site instructions. Set one agreed place to capture it, assign responsibility for confirming it with the customer, and tell dispatch and drivers how to see the latest version. Keep a way to handle changes when connectivity fails. Run the arrangement on five deliveries while leaving the previous method available as a fallback. Count duplicate entries or requests and minutes spent handling them per delivery. Also count wrong-location calls, missed instructions and corrections; saving time at the expense of a failed delivery is a poor result.

Suppose a small courier firm handles ten similar local deliveries each day. In a sample of ten, dispatch enters the address into two systems and drivers phone for clarification on three deliveries. The extra copy takes three minutes per case, while each clarification call averages five minutes. The measured duplicate work is 30 minutes of entry plus 15 minutes of calls across that sample. The firm trials one verified booking record for the next ten comparable deliveries. If duplicate entry disappears but clarification calls continue, the issue may be poor directions rather than duplicate systems. All figures here are illustrative assumptions; the firm should measure its own work.

If the new method takes one minute per delivery to verify the data and eliminates 30 minutes of copying, the gross time saving is 20 minutes across ten cases, before setup and training. If two deliveries now have an incorrect address because changes are not synchronised, stop and repair the update process. Record time saved for the whole operation, not only for dispatch. The driver may be doing more work even while the office looks faster. Check whether delivery accuracy and customer communication stay at least as good as before.

Keep a short before-and-after record

Before the trial, count the number of times information is entered or requested per case and the minutes spent on each repetition. Record a quality measure such as corrections per delivery or customer calls caused by bad instructions. During the trial, note exceptions: a customer changes address, a system is offline, or a driver cannot access the record. After five or ten cases, compare like with like. Separate setup time from recurring time; a one-hour setup can still be worthwhile if a recurring saving is real, but do not call it free.

Use the same definitions before and after. If a clarification call is counted as a correction before the change, count it afterward too. If one delivery is unusually complex, annotate it. Small samples help reveal operational problems but may not establish a lasting average. The Institute for Healthcare Improvement recommends learning from small tests and adapting changes to local conditions before spreading them. That is a helpful discipline when a business is tempted to remove every repeated step at once.

Common mistakes and limits

A shared field is useful only when someone owns its accuracy. Linking systems without a way to handle conflicting updates can automate the error. Copy-and-paste may still save time in a rare case, but a second database for every case creates ongoing maintenance. Removing a second-person approval can expose a business to fraud, safety issues or contract breaches. Do not treat a compliance requirement as waste because it is repetitive. Check local requirements and ask a specialist when a regulated service, payment control, sensitive customer data or safety-critical task is involved.

Likewise, a new digital tool can take longer to learn than the original task if volume is low. The smallest fix may be a clearer customer form, a single handoff note or a rule that the person who changes a booking also informs dispatch. Involve the people who depend on the data before changing it. If they still need a private backup, find out what the official process fails to supply. A measure of reduced duplication is meaningful only when completed deliveries remain correct.

Next step: choose five completed cases and mark every time one piece of information was entered, requested or checked. Identify one copy with no independent control purpose, test a single source for five more cases, then compare duplicate steps, minutes per case and correction rate.

Sources

• ASQ: Process analysis tools. Guidance on identifying the steps, decisions and people in a process.
• Institute for Healthcare Improvement: Testing changes. Guidance on evaluating a change with small tests.