The Cobbler's Shop

When I was a young lad, many years ago, every village had one and the towns had loads - what? - The Cobbler's Shop.  In real terms, shoes were probably more expensive than they are now.  A good pair of shoes could last many years but not without repair.  So the cobbler's shop was one of the pillars of the community.  All he would do, and I never recall seeing a female cobbler, would repair shoes.  He would generally be an affable character, so a visit to his shop would include a few pleasantries.  But then down to business and the customer would place the shoes on the counter, explaining the problem.  The cobbler would attach a ticket to the shoes, place them on a rack, give a duplicate of the ticket to the customer and say: "Come back next week."

It would always take a week to repair a pair of shoes and it was easy to see why.  The racks of shoes behind the cobbler's counter would represent a week's backlog of shoe repairs!  So although it might take the cobbler, say, one hour to repair the customer's shoes, it would take a week before he would get round to doing it.  Business analysts seeking to improve the performance of companies often use a measure known as the velocity ratio.  In any business process, the velocity ratio is the ratio of productive to total elapsed and available time.  Let's assume the average time taken for the cobbler to repair a pair of shoes, was one hour.  When I was a lad, the working week was probably around 48 hours.  So the cobbler's velocity ratio was 1/48 x 100% = 2%.  In a super-efficient organisation, the aim would be for all productive processes to have velocity ratios as close to 100% as possible!  So the cobbler was very inefficient.

Time has moved on and there are still shoe repair facilities, although not as many as when I was a lad and there aren't many villages that have one.  The methods for repairing shoes haven't changed radically but what about the efficiency?  Well, it is now possible to go to the repairer, put your shoes on the counter and have them repaired while you wait.  The productive time equals the elapsed time, so the velocity ratio is 100%.  But what does the shoe repairer do with the time he has on his hands between repairs, because he no longer has a backlog of shoes to occupy his time?  He does other things like key cutting, engraving, mobile phone screen repairs, trophies, passport photos, watch repairs, etc.

Those who have stayed in business have done so by diversification.  This is a classic example of business improvement by looking at better ways of doing things rather than just automating by using new technology - fantastic!  But you know what?  I really miss The Cobbler's Shop!

I would like to thank Joe Booth at access2growth, who helped me through a business improvement programme in the mid 1990s, for the inspiration for this story.