Lean Office: The Next Frontier

Posted on 26. Apr, 2009 by carolesf in Articles

Okay, you get the whole Lean Manufacturing thing.  But what the heck is Lean Office? 

The Lean Office Concept

Lean Manufacturing is starting to make sense to you.  Though a part of you really wants to hang onto that safety margin of inventory “just in case,” your data-driven brain accepts that Inventory Equals Waste.  Fine.  You understand the value of Lean Thinking as it relates directly to what you sell, even if that’s a service and not a widget.

But can you really apply Lean Thinking to your company’s administrative functions?  HR?  Accounts Payable?  IT? 

None of these departments are directly related to producing what your customers want to buy, yet it’s difficult to imagine how a modern company could operate without them.  It’s even more challenging to imagine how to observe, map, and quantify the value streams associated with them.  And changing these departments will be more difficult still, since these areas are even more strongly influenced by local company culture and “the human factor” than is the manufacturing environment.

So how does Lean Office work?  First of all, let’s be clear that Lean Office is not about cutting people or departments.  It’s about getting the most value out of the people and departments you have. 

The main idea is the same as in all Lean efforts:  Cutting out wasted effort or time. 

In the office environment, that could be the time files or other work items spend sitting around waiting for someone to work on them.  That’s the entire process of getting useless rubber-stamp signatures for some routine purchase.  It’s having a staff meeting on Wednesday mornings just because there’s always been a staff meeting on Wednesday mornings — even though half the time no agenda is prepared, the boss is late, and there aren’t even any doughnuts. 

Lean Office follows the same principles as Lean Manufacturing, but you may have to get a little creative to figure out what some of these terms mean in the office environment.

For instance, in an Accounts Payable office, the “customer” could actually be seen as the supplier who is waiting to be paid, the “product” is invoices, and the goal of “going Lean” would be to reduce the number of days an invoice goes unpaid. 

In an HR department, the “customers” are other departments internal to the company; the “product” is willing and qualified workers; and the metric for success of your Lean efforts might be to reduce the number of days an open position goes unfilled.

To succeed at Lean Office, you need to map the current process in terms of flow.  How does paper flow (or the equivalent in electronic forms)?   How does information flow, and is it the same as the paper flow or not?  (If not, think hard about the value of some of those forms.)  Map the value-add and non-value-add costs. 

Once again, the Lean principles are:

(1) Specify value — as the customer sees it, however the customer is defined for your function.

(2) Map the value stream, identifying value-add and non-value-add costs — and minimize the latter.

(3) Make the remaining process steps flow.  This usually means empowering the workforce, pushing down responsibility for a decision to the right level in the organization.

(4) Let the customer pull the desired product through the production process.  Don’t do work until someone has asked for it.

(5) And finally, don’t stop there.  Pursue perfection through continual improvement.  In other words, the job is never done.

Now look around your workspace.  Can you put your hands on any piece of information you need in under one minute?  Could somebody else walking into your office find the needed info in under one minute if you weren’t there?  

If not, then we apply the 5S process to HQ: Sort, Straighten, Sweep, Standardize, and Sustain.  The goal is, “A place for everything and everything in its place.”  

The fact is, if you’ve already achieved Lean production (whether of a service or a widget), there’s no need to let flabby practices in the office keep you from world domination.  You owe it to yourself to give Lean Office your best shot.

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Related posts:

1. Lean Manufacturing: No Muss, No Fuss
2. Lean Thinking Generates Value — And Profits
3. Lean Management: The Art of Asking the Right Questions
4. Process Mapping: Creating Business Success
5. Value Stream Mapping: Get To Know Your Process

Tags: 5S, lean, lean manufacturing, lean office, non value add, value add