History is littered with individuals who made stunning contributions to humanity, but who were not credited with their foresight at the time.
Take, for example, Dr Spencer Silver. While attempting to create a strong-adhesive, he accidentally made a low-tack, reusable sticky substance, for which there was seemingly no application. Then, a few years later, as one story goes, a gentleman by the name of Art Fry used it to anchor the bookmark in his hymn-book. From here, the sticky note was born, and a generation of lean thinkers was enabled to make awesome flow-maps!
The subject of today’s post is a name that I first came across many years ago, and I have been stunned by his simple vision ever since.
Clarence Saunders was the inventor of the supermarket. On the 11th of September, 1916, at 79, Jefferson Avenue, Memphis, Tennessee, Saunders opened a store called Piggly Wiggly.
The concept was stunningly simple, and yet utterly remarkable, as the best ideas always are. Before the opening of this shop, it was traditional that customers would enter a store and give their list to a clerk. The clerk would the busy themselves by going to the appropriate storage locations and picking the items that the customer desired.
There were obvious problems with this. Firstly, there was the customer waiting time. If you were third or fourth in the queue, you knew you were in for a wait. You could see the staff dashing about, which gave some impression of value-add, but you knew that they were not working on your request.
Secondly, a customer could have no real idea if the things on their list were in the store. Ironically, this issue arises with online grocery shopping. We can make a request, but if our preferred item is not in stock, we do not have the luxury of picking our own substitute, or of deciding to leave the shop without it.
Thirdly, the clerk is experiencing motion waste. The items on the list will not necessarily be in the order in which the clerk would like to pick them, so some serious thought is also required to minimise trips back to the same storage locations.
In Saunders’ new store customers served themselves. They entered via a turnstile and followed a pre-designated route to the check-out, a model still used by a Swedish furniture giant today. In this way, customers passed all the products available and selected those that they liked for their basket.
Commodities, such as flour and sugar, were packaged into smaller quantities out in the back and marketed directly to the customer in eye-catching packets. It was the beginning of branding and product identity. Fruit and vegetables were available to be picked from bins, and there were even chiller cabinets, containing goods like milk and butter.
To the customer, it must have been a startling experience, but they loved it, and the Piggly Wiggly brand started to spread.
Saunders, by the very nature of his concept, would have been using lean principles in his stores. Piggly Wiggly represented both a pull and a push system. Stock in the store would only be replenished when consumed by a customer, which sent clear signals into the supply chain to trigger storeroom replenishment. But the use of a push system was also ingenious. By forcing customers to pass all of the shelves on their route around the shop, Saunders unlocked the profit-centre of impulse buying.
With costs, such as staff and excess inventory stripped out of his business model, Saunders was able to pass savings onto his customers in the shape of lower prices. He had realised the lean ideal of creating more value for the customer at a lower cost. This goal was achieved through an innate ability to reduce waste and understand the voice of the customer.
That Saunders eventually became bankrupt and lost control of his empire may be the sad end to this story. But I like to reflect that around forty years later, men like Taiichi Ohno were observing the US supermarket and taking concepts like JIT, pull, and FIFO, back to their native Japan.
These ideas would eventually become enablers such as Just-In-Time and Kanban, both important mainstays of the revered Toyota Production System.
I would like to think that, as we continue to celebrate TPS, we should also tip our hat in the direction of Mister Clarence Saunders, a true innovator and visionary.
Simon D. Gary is the author of the new book “Super Lean: Unlock Your Company’s Million Dollar Edge,” which offers breakthrough discussion into the topic of lean. You can buy your copy here.