Home and Away (and then Home again, eventually)

What a fun journey life can be.

I've got a few things in my head to talk about from last week, but thought I'd tell my story of coming home.

McColleague and I left Internet World 2009 at Earls Court in plenty time to get ourselves out to Heathrow. Basically to minimise the risk of Transport for London making a meal of it!

I'd checked in online, and rather than print a boarding card, got the QR code sent to my G1 - and it worked! Paperless travel is possible! (except for my photographic ID...).

We got access to the BMI lounge (and therefore free stuff), had a quick, efficient and harmless flight - BMI were great all 'round, as they were when Mrs theWeir and I travelled back from NZ a few years ago. Then there was a wee bug in the ointment.

The flight time from Heathrow to Edinburgh: 55 minutes. Time to get out of the car park: 20 minutes. It seems the volume of traffic leaving the car park was too much for the poorly designed system - you get a certain amount of time from buying your ticket to present that ticket at the exit barrier. And basically people were running out of time.

250 vehicles, four barriers, one fella in the booth to help people who needed another ticket issued. Clearly not his fauly, but the system is broken by design. Alas I couldn't take a picture as the G1 has stopped reading my MicroSD card. Need to figure out why!

Anyway, can someone please with some Lean process management techniques offer to fix this clearly broken system?