This commercial made me chuckle as somebody who has bought and used a lot of Brother label makers.
The video is meant to comically show the ill effects of a lack of labeling in a circus A/V control room (I saw this posted on Facebook by a college friend who does professional lighting design work for rock bands and pop stars). This clearly resonated with him (and I bet he labels things).
Watching the video, the root cause (to me) seems to be a lack of training, as the older guy very half-heartedly shows the younger guy how to run the lighting and sound for the circus. Or, at least that’s a bigger contributor than the lack of labeling, perhaps. The “trainer” throws a manual at him… not exactly a textbook case of the Training Within Industry method, is it?
The four-step TWI “Job Instruction” method would have been much more effective.
The older guy should have put the younger guy at ease and learned what he already knew about running A/V for a circus. He should have demonstrated how it was done, then doing so again while explaining “key points” and “reasons why.” He should have observed the younger guy running the board, coaching him and giving feedback. Even then, he’s a few steps away from letting the younger guy run the show by himself.
Poor training + more labeling might have led to just the same problems:
Funny commercial, though!
Don’t do your training like that in a hospital!
About LeanBlog.org: Mark Graban is a consultant, author, and speaker in the “lean healthcare” methodology. Mark is author of the Shingo Award-winning books Lean Hospitals and Healthcare Kaizen, as well as the new Executive Guide to Healthcare Kaizen. Mark is also the VP of Customer Success for the technology company KaiNexus.
