The lean officeMany organizations across the world use lean concepts in manufacturing context for great success. Lean manufacturing has inspired virtually every manufacturer around the world to reduce waste and achieve high quality and of cause more profit. But lean concept can be applied beyond manufacturing, especially in your office making your office a lean office. What is a lean office?The lean office can be described as a place where waste is eliminated to offer their internal and external customers a better service. Of cause almost every principle used in manufacturing context can be used with similar meanings in office as well. Elimination of work in progress, continuous flow of value and standardization of work are few examples. What are the differences between lean manufacturing and lean office?While there are many similarities between these, there are some differences which should be identified very clearly for a successful transformation of your office to a lean office. In manufacturing context wastes are visible and can be quantified easily. For an example it is very easy to identify the amount of WIP available in your manufacturing floor. But when it comes to your office, it is hard to identify the amount of pending work every workstation carries. On the other hand office work involve with many people. For an example one has to complete their work before it can be completed by another person. This makes it difficult to asses the problem and hence to propose the solution. On the other hand the office culture is different to the manufacturing culture. It is more informal in nature. This makes defining the job roles and assigning the responsibilities little difficult. But on the other hand carrying out the changes in an office context is easier compared to a manufacturing environment. There is no or minimal changes required in physical changes to the office equipment and processes. Training might be easier. This can be done in steps. This makes it easier to manage the changes and monitor the results easily. Why you need to implement lean concepts in your office?Lean manufacturing can not be isolated from your total process. To get the real benefits of your lean efforts in the manufacturing floor, it is very essential to transmit those advantages to your customer. This requires all your organization to be aligned in a way that value flow is not disturbed throughout the process. This means every activity in your organization must be aligned to eliminate waste from the system and create value. For an example, if your distribution functionality is operating in batches of two days, that is if you dispatch goods once in every two days there is no point of having a work in progress of one hour. Although this might help your manufacturing floor, in the bigger picture the WIP of your organization is two days from a customer’s point of view. This is why every activity should be aligned with lean efforts. By transforming your distribution centre to a lean distribution centre, you can deliver goods to your customers in smaller batches making lean efforts beneficial to the end customer. So what to do? Where to start?Making your office a lean place should be planned taking your customer requirement into consideration. Always remember to look into the bigger picture. Educate your employees on the requirement of these changes. Listen to them and get them involved in your lean conversion. Simplifying the processes is a must for any successful lean implementation. Trust your employees. Get read of unnecessary documentations and approval processes unless if they are really required from your customer’s point of view. Specially simplify the communication channels. Make it straightforward. Create the culture of finishing the required work when it is required. Standardize processes and set up clear guidelines. Make the process mistake proofed. Always keep communicating and specially give people the credit to what they have achieved and motivate them to continue the good work. Break the mentalities of sub optimization. Keep monitoring the progress and continuously do the improvements. In simple terms get the PDCA cycle rolling on waste elimination. When the culture is changed people in your office will start thinking on the ways of further improvement and this cycle will start rolling itself. Always remember, lean tools might be specific to the implementation but lean thinking is universal and can be applied in any context where waste can be found and need is their to eliminate waste. |
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