Most people are aware or have heard of Lean Thinking or Lean Manufacturing but what about Lean office.
But what is it?

Lean provides tried and tested, practical tools to improve business processes in the office the same way it does on the shop floor. It focuses on reducing costs, eliminating waste and driving up efficiency within business processes.

A typical lean office study would examine:
• Value stream identification and mapping
• Waste elimination
• Error prevention
• Office structure and layout
• Performance measurement
• Root cause problem solving
• Effective team working and leadership
• Aligning computer systems to customer value

Lean has a very powerful set of tools, is easy to understand and is implemented incrementally, costs are kept down and results can be achieved very quickly.

Some people think you cannot apply Lean to an office but below are three areas where you could apply it and the types of waste you may find:

1. Order Processing- errors in data entry, lack of standard work, imbalance of work between associates, customers waiting.

2. Change Orders – long lead times regardless of type of change, delays due to multiple approvers, unnecessary approvers, inefficient approval process, ***wasted time in meetings, engineering resources doing work that could be done by others to speed up process, etc.

3. Poor office layout affecting productivity.

4. Purchasing Requisition and Ordering Process – inappropriate approval processes, errors in paperwork/data entry, large expediting costs.

***Lean Meetings, now there’s something we could write a whole book on!!