How does Mclaren complete an F1 pit stop in 1.8 seconds?
My car ran over a nail in the street a few weeks ago, resulting in a flat tyre. Annoying, really annoying, and messy for me wearing good clothes, and not having changed a tyre for years. It took me 35 minutes and many creative expletives to make the change to the spare.
By contrast, the Mclaren F1 team does essentially the same job in 1.8 seconds.
Looking at the video, a number of things jump out.
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- Every person has a job. They know it in absolute detail from beginning to end. They also know the process of handing that job on to the next step in the activity chain. In the case of McLaren, each activity is a discrete job, each of which when completed creates a vital piece of the whole. The hand-off to the next activity is as choreographed as each job.
- Each job is broken down into its component parts and done in sequence. The car stops, is jacked up, one person loosens the tyre nut, another removes the tyre, another places the new tyre onto the axle, another places and tightens the nut. This happens at each wheel, and when complete, they step away, the car is lowered, and takes off. Each action takes the minimum of time and effort, and each action is coordinated with the one before and after.
- The resulting pit stop happens after hundreds of hours of task interrogation, planning, testing ideas, and rehearsals. Tiny compounding improvements occur over an extended period, resulting in the outcome that delivers a record.
Most improvement initiatives I see are more performance than positive action. We try and make people feel better, smarter, more careful, part of a team. Often the team operates in isolation from the processes on each side, which at best results in minor improvement as the bottleneck moves from one point to another in the whole end to end process.
Taking a leaf out of the McLaren book and following the steps they make obvious in this video when we choose to see them, should be the foundation of your improvement project plan.
