"The Final Frontier - The transformation is incredible"

Lean Office

To understand the Lean office principle, firstly it is useful to examine the origins of Lean.

The History of Lean
Taiichi Ohno went to the United States from Japan in 1956. Ohno was with Toyota Motor Corp. at the time. Toyota was facing post-war issues related to manufacturing and had major concerns with inventory levels, and the cost associated with carrying inventory which were unaffordable. Ohno while visiting an American supermarket, conceptualised a vision of pull production. This became an essential element of what is now known as the Toyota Production System. Ohno’s work was to radically change of the way things were done. Production was to be based on demand. Pull, not pushing it out in the market. Processes were to be based on doing things just-in-time. If there is demand for a product, then it is made. Products aren't made in anticipation as that would be wasteful.

Could the principles that have made Toyota the world's No1 car maker be applied to the office environment? Quite simply, the answer is YES!

Hidden Waste in the office
Waste, is all of the non-value adding activities that take place. In the office environment waste and inefficiencies manifest themselves in poor service, long lead-times, poor response times, customer quality problems, high inventory, too much transporting of documents, poorly laid out workspaces, waiting, over processing and producing too much unneeded items.

The Lean Office
The process of becoming a Lean Office starts with a map of the ‘value stream' so as to understand what adds value and what parts of the process do not. All interconnecting departments are covered as many of the waste elements can be found at the interface. Traditional administrative flow is then converted to Lean Office and lean management is applied to the administrative and service processes. Time, distance, number of people required, amount of equipment used are amongst the measurables that are applied to the process. Full involvement by office staff is essential for buy-in and sustainability. Staff are taught how to problem solve and project manage ideas into reality and a full continuous improvement programme is launched.

The Visual Office
Maintaining the momentum is one of the most difficult parts of the process. After the initial euphoria there are the improvement activities that take longer or require external approval. Establishing a ‘Performance Centre' which is a live and visual expression of the performance, improvements and achievements of the team is a must. In some offices we have established a dedicated Kaizen room fully equipped with the resources necessary to facilitate the continuous improvement process and trained the trainers and champions in leading a Kaizen event as part of the knowledge transfer.

Kaizen is the Japanese word for continuous improvement. Japanese terms can be adopted as a focus for change.

Taiichii Ohno