Pratibha had learned a lot from her experiences at APL. She knew that to fix a problem she had to understand step-by-step what was supposed to happen. Then, she could identify where the problems were occurring and fix them.

To start their work, Pratibha and her team became experts on dangerous and hazardous cargo. What did different people — from a ship’s captain to a truck driver to a United States customs official — need to know about DNH cargo to make sure they’d treat the cargo safely? What were all the different rules about different kinds of dangerous cargo? And when did all of these people need to know that information?

For instance, Pratibha learned that a ship’s captain couldn’t just get a letter after he sailed telling him he was carrying three containers full of hazardous chemicals on his ship. He had to know well before he sailed and even before the ship was loaded, since the containers with dangerous chemicals would probably need to be loaded in very specific places so they wouldn’t cause problems on board the ship.

Now that she had a good understanding of why the paperwork about DNH cargo was so important, who needed it, and when they needed it, Pratibha turned her attention to the people who created all the paperwork. Who was involved — in the offices of APL customers and at APL offices — in identifying dangerous cargo and calling attention to it through special paperwork?

As Pratibha and her team studied the problem, they learned that people in the Logistics Department who worked at the port were receiving 25% of their DNH paperwork late. The paperwork was late because of problems Pratibha and her staff were having with the paperwork at Customer Service. What could her team do about the problem?