LEAN Project: Cisco Telepresence room utilization automation project; The project gives details about implementation of LEAN quality concepts to reduce process errors & saving 518 hours resulting in benefit of $12,965 ~ 0.25 FTE (Full Time Employee) per-annum while calculating the video conferencing room utilization across an organization.

1. SAGNIK PAL
PROGRAM MANAGER,
IT Services, INDIA
: sagnik.pal@gmail.com
: http://in.linkedin.com/in/sagnikpal/
LEAN PROJECT: CISCO TELEPRESENCE
ROOM CAPACITY UTILIZATION

2. Business Case:
< - - Omitted - - > had 240 live Telepresence room. Each room was associated with
a mailbox in Exchange. To calculate the room utilization across entire company, a
third party developed outlook script was executed which accessed each room
calendar from Exchange & calculated the room utilization based n calendar
bookings.
Problem Statement:
• The Outlook script used to take up lot of CPU & the engineer running it would
not be able to use his laptop for the entire duration
• In case of network or exchange server issue, the script would skip rooms or
meetings from the calendar without giving any error thus giving a wrong output.
• Customer was expanding the Telepresence infrastructure to over 400 rooms & it
would be impossible to run this tool across 400 rooms with above limitations
The downloading and formatting of User data took 6 Hrs once a week for 240
rooms
Goal Statement:
• To reduce Time spent on capacity reporting
• Eliminate errors in the final report
LEAN PROJECT OVERVIEW
Business:
< - - Omitted - - >
Stakeholders:
< - - Omitted - - >
Metrics Impacted:
Capacity Utilization reporting
Methodology Used:
MUDA – Processing Transactions
In scope:
Raw dump of Data in tsv format from Cisco
TelePresence Manager
Out scope:
NA
Improvements:
Faster and Accurate room utilization reporting

3. Post Lean Process:
• Automated report giving each Telepresence room
utilization along with top 15 & bottom 15 utilized rooms.
• Time: Total time involved in the processing = 1.4 Hrs pa for
400 rooms.
Advantages:
• Quantitative benefits: Saving of 518.6 hours resulting in
benefit of $12,965 ~ 0.25 FTE
• Elimination of error
Lessons Learned:
All repetitive work are subject to automation and the same
time can be used for more value added works.
MUDA in Processing with standard workflow can be avoided
using automated tools
Pre Lean Process:
• The manual execution of Outlook script from engineer’s
laptop.
• Accuracy: Network/Exchange server load impacts
accuracy of final output
• Time: Total time involved in the processing = 520 Hrs pa
for 400 rooms.
Implementation Details:
• Excel VBA script was developed with tsv file from CTM as
the input
Process Controls:
• SOP with all the process steps was captured in excel.
• SOP describing the usage of the new tool was prepared in
MS Word
• Training: L1 Video team was trained on the usage of new
solution
LEAN PROJECT DETAILS: TELEPRESENCE ROOM UTILIZATION

4. Pre Lean Post Lean
VALUE STREAM MAPPING
Outlook performs cleanup
task to provide final output
per room in excel
Outlook accesses each
exchange mailbox & dumps
data in excel
Execute Outlook Script
while laptop is connected to
customer network
START
STOP
6 Hours /
Execution
for 240
rooms
MUDA
Processing
Formatted output file along
with automated dashboard
generated
Execute Excel script with
tsv file as input
Download data from CTS
Manager
START
STOP
58 Sec /
Execution
for 240
rooms

5. BENEFIT QUANTIFICATION
Description Quantification
Manual Hours Spent before Automation for 400 rooms / Yr 520
Manual Hours Spent after Automation for 400 rooms / Yr 1.4
Hours Saved / Yr 518.6
Billing rate / Hr (USD) {Rough estimate mentioned} $25
Amount Saved / Yr $12,965
Yearly FTE billing {Based on rough estimate mentioned} $52,000
Number equivalent FTE Saved 0.25

6. LEAN PROJECT DETAILS: TECHNICAL SOLUTION
An Excel based script
to automate room
booking & utilization
calculation
Dashboard completely
automated

7. LEAN PROJECT DETAILS: FINAL DASHBOARD
Automated dashboard summarizing
room utilization based on multiple
data analysis
• Room distribution across Geo
• Number of meeting, Hours of
meetings, Average Utilization
per room across Geo
• Top & bottom 15 room
utilizations etc

8. QUESTIONS / FEEDBACK
If you have a question or a feedback related to
LEAN Implementation, do write to Sagnik Pal at
sagnik.pal@gmail.com

9. Thank You