Module 10 · Process Improvement with BPMN and Lean
"Final project: the next improvement cycle"
Plan your final project, a full improvement case for Harbourline's next PDCA cycle, and summarise it on one page in the A3 format Lean organisations use.
About 20 minutes
The problem
The pre-arrival checklist worked: about 2.25 fewer days at port per clearance and roughly ₦103,000 less demurrage per container. The operations director wants to keep going. "What's next, and what will it be worth?"
The data already hints at the answer. During the pilot, the wait for duty payment confirmation didn't move (about 46 hours, before and after), and Red-channel clearances still spend over 7 days at port. Your final project is the full improvement case for the next cycle: map it, measure it, find the root causes, design the change, estimate the benefit, and plan the pilot and its controls.
The concept
The A3 report
Lean organisations summarise an improvement on one sheet of A3 paper, so the whole story fits on one page and anyone can follow the reasoning. Its sections follow PDCA:
| Section | Contains |
|---|---|
| Background | why this matters, in customer terms |
| Current condition | the process map and the key numbers |
| Goal | the target, with a date |
| Root cause analysis | fishbone, five whys, Pareto: the causes you'll act on |
| Countermeasures | the changes, each tied to a root cause |
| Plan | who does what, by when, and how the pilot will be judged |
| Follow-up | the control plan, and what you'll check after the pilot |
The discipline of fitting it on one page forces you to keep only what matters.
Example
The A3 for the cycle you've just studied would open like this:
Background: containers spent 8.6 days at port against 3 free days; customers paid ₦184m in demurrage in January to April 2026.
Current condition: flow efficiency 4.3%; the longest waits were for corrected documents (about 72 hours, on a third of clearances), duty payment (46 hours) and inspection (42 hours, Red channel).
Goal: documents complete on arrival from 66% to 85% by the end of June 2026.
Walkthrough
- Choose the focus of your next cycle: the duty-payment wait, the inspection queue for Red-channel files, or both.
- Measure the current condition from the pilot-period data (May and June), since that's the new baseline.
- Find the root causes, using the fishbone and five whys. The lesson 7 task on duty payment is a starting point.
- Design the countermeasures and estimate the benefit in demurrage.
- Plan the pilot, with a run chart, mix checks and a control plan.
- Open the project brief on the course page and write the full case and the A3.
Practice
Practice
During the pilot, what was the average wait in hours before Confirm duty payment? One decimal place.
Practice
During the pilot, what was the average number of days at port for Red channel clearances? Two decimal places.
Task
10 minWrite the first three sections of an A3 for your next improvement cycle: Background, Current condition and Goal, each starting on its own line with its heading. Use at least four numbers from the data, and make the goal measurable with a date.
Your work is checked for
- A Background section
- A Current condition section
- A Goal section
- At least four numbers
- The goal has a date or time frame
- No more than 200 words: an A3 is short
Check your understanding
Answer every question to check.