What is Lean Office ?
Lean is the relentless elimination of waste in a process to satisfy the customer. While the lean thinking is often adopted to the manufacturing area or the shop floor it should not stop there.
In fact the whole customer experience should be viewed end to end. As a customer I would think I would measure the timeliness of a company from the moment I made an order until a shipment is delivered to my doorstep.
Imagine company XYZ. They have been applying Lean impeccably to its production process that they are able to produce a product in one day. However due to still unimproved process in handling of invoice, customer’s data in the office area the shipment took additional 3 days. How tragic that would be because from a customer’s perspective the whole process took 4 days.
It therefore makes perfect sense to extend the lean thinking in the office. The 8 types of waste in manufacturing floor can be seen in the office as well albeit in different forms.
Consider this case. In order to prepare an invoice, Cherry had to click 5 subdirectories to access a template. Also she had to do some variation in the form. Using Lean thinking we could think of this as Motion type of muda or waste. Is it possible for Cherry’s team to standardize the form and make it accessible ?
This is a just a simple case but looking at the office and using “Lean goggles” , one could definitely spot a lot of Muda.
So the next time you are planning for a wave of Lean Projects, try applying Lean to the office. You will be surprised at the number of significant improvements you can make.
