Installing Lean Office Kaizen - How To Get There?

Where and How to Get Started?

          -“(Lean) Office Kaizen must be installed on-site by a committed and strongly led leadership team…the installation is always custom to the make-up of the organization.”
          -Wm. Lareau “Office Kaizen”

When defining Lean Office Kaizen, we say it is a system to reduce office waste immediately and over the long term with continuous improvement.  So what is this “waste”?  It can be shown in four categories:

PEOPLE WASTE

          -“Critical process inefficiencies aren’t as visible as they are in a factory…you also need to see and eliminate the waste inherent in how people work.”
          -Dan Markovitz, article on Lean Office

Markovitz points out that it is difficult for people to focus on their work when they are constantly interrupted.  He cites a University of California study that found “workers are interrupted in their tasks every 11 minutes.”  Another survey found that “55% of executive read their emails as soon as it arrives.”

Interruptions cost you money!

The constant interruptions reduce efficiency by 20% to 40% so office work is not getting done as fast as possible.  Markovitz states that “workers are losing 45 minutes a day” due to poor work habits which calculate to “4 ½ work weeks a year.”

Sub-Utilization

People waste is the result of not utilizing workers’ skills to their full potential due to little or no training, office politics, low pay, or high turnover.  If there is no goal setting, (individual or team), employees are working at cross-purposes and spending a lot of time correcting problems (rework).  Also, not assigning work properly or assigning unnecessary work is a waste of people resources.  This results in unbalanced workloads and can be very demoralizing and stressful for the employees.

Waiting: The Worst Use of Time!

Two other examples of people waste are waiting waste and motion waste.  With waiting waste, time is eaten up waiting for information, meetings, signatures, phone calls, emails, repair of broken equipment, system downtimes, directions from management, etc.

Motion waste involves the flow of people around their work area – is it set up efficiently?  What about the flow of paperwork or emails or phone calls?  These wastes do not add value due to poor office design, badly placed office equipment, and inaccessible office supplies.

Another consideration for people waste is human behavior.

          -“Efforts fail because leaders do not compensate for the realities of human behavior…(the) forces (of human behavior) provide the super-charging boost that takes an organization from average to world-class.  (The) failure to deal with the realities of human behavior is responsible for most business problems, failures and shortfalls that are controllable by the organization.”
          Wm. Lareau “Office Kaizen” 

PROCESS WASTE

Process waste happens during procedure/processing operations and is usually the result of neglect, bad design, or the attitude of “We’ve always done it that way.”  Process waste and people waste are overlapping and intertwined.

          One process waste = One people waste
          One people waste = One or more process waste

There are hundreds of process wastes in one company. 

Here are a few examples:

-Overproduction: doing work before it’s required.
-Over processing: working on one item more than is necessary.
-Control: doing more monitoring than is required.
-Too many rules - Over-Regulation: makes the work very complicated and subject to many errors.
-Variability: unexpected outcomes from people doing things different from others.
-Reliability: correction of the unexpected outcomes due to lack of knowledge/training.
-Standardization: workers ignoring best practices.
-Sub-optimization: duplicate or competing processes.
-Scheduling: poor organization or planning.
-Work around: ignoring the formal process for the informal.
-Uneven flow: backlog of information and materials.
-Checking: over-inspection and rework
-Errors: work created to correct mistakes... Many More!

INFORMATION WASTE

Information waste leads to loss of value because of poor, outdated, duplicated, or incomplete data.  This causes costly mistakes because the corrections (rework) take a lot of time and effort.  Some examples of information waste are:

          -Translation: exchanging bad data and formats between procedure steps and owners.
          -Hand-off: Transferring data/materials within a group not part of the procedure chain.
          -Missing information: resources are wasted to correct key data or information.
          -Irrelevant information: Unnecessary data that creates confusion, slows processing or causes errors.
          -Inaccurate information: wrong data or information.

ASSET WASTE

Asset waste is not using material and/or property efficiently.  This includes buildings, office equipment, supplies, products, and services.  Mainly this is due to people not knowing the features of the assets. Examples of asset waste include but are not limited to:

          -Excess inventory, time, supplies, and piles of unused or outdated materials.
          -Product ready to go but held up for some unknown or known reason.
          -WIP or work in progress that cannot be completed because of inefficient workflow.
          -Defects or mistakes and errors and the resources needed to correct them.
          -Outdated procedures; difficult or unclear forms.
          -People not trained to use Software
          -Moving product/material around inefficiently; transportation of information and materials; late deliveries to customers; concentration of consumables.

Fixed asset waste where too many resources are being used on equipment, buildings, workspaces, systems, inventory, etc...