As everyone knows, Santa's gift factory is located at the North Pole. And of course, it runs at full speed around Christmas time. There are many people in the world who want to receive gifts. How does Santa manage to supply them all in one day? That wasn't always easy. In the past, work in the gift factory was inefficient and chaotic. The work steps were mainly carried out manually - with little time for quality checks. This often led to extended delivery times or faulty gifts, resulting in disappointment for the gift recipients. After years of this ho-ho-high-stress activity, Santa had the idea to change his approach to a more sophisticated, standardized and automated process, as if from an assembly line, so that Christmas Eve would end with a smile for everyone - as a clever Christmas elf had whispered to him.
For his transformation project, Santa used the factory approach to ensure that the entire process would be fast, secure and standardized in the future. According to this approach, the individual steps can be divided into the phases Design, Build, Verify and Migrate. Support was provided by a dedicated and experienced team of elf experts.
In the first step, the correct procedure is determined. To do this, the initial situation is analyzed in detail. So first and foremost, Santa had to get an overview of the gift production procedure. How many gifts need to be delivered, what is available in the gift warehouse and what needs to be newly produced? What production equipment needs to be provided? How much time does the process take? How can complexity be minimized? For this purpose, all wish lists from various sources are first collected, sorted, requirements are defined from them, and the production procedure is designed. This preparation requires a lot of precision and is very important, as the entire success of the transformation project depends on it.
Once these factors were known and thought through, the new process flows were introduced and implemented. Since it is already clear in this phase which resources and capacities are available, the existing gifts are provided and missing ones are produced in time. The processes of the Secret Santa factory are also agile, so that adjustments are still possible.
In the third, very important phase, the gifts are checked and tested again. The hardworking Christmas elves check the quality requirements of the gifts and try them out before they are wrapped. Faulty gifts are either repaired or produced anew. The wrapped gifts land on the sleigh, which is checked one last time for functionality.
In the final phase, the gifts are ready to be distributed. The elves of the shipping team rely on the standardized procedures to check the gifts against the lists and make sure everything is there. Santa can now rest assured that the delivery process will work flawlessly, and Christmas will be a complete success for everyone involved.
