v0 June 30th 2005
Lean Office, Lean Administration Texte disponible en français
From workshop to office
Produce and transform
Since early days of Scientific Management, which most known founder is probably Frederick TAYLOR, industry has been the great provider of methods, methodologies, tools, procedures and work guides among all.
Many similarities exist between production job in a workshop and administrative job.
It's in industry, in production workshops, where methods and best practices have been, and still are bred. Once their success is proven in the demanding and competitive environment of industrial production, the best practices and winning methods catch the attention of managers (and consultants) who try to adapt them to other activities. The principles of Lean Manufacturing did not escape this rule and that is how they are found as Lean Office or Lean Administration in the offices and tertiary activities.
Author Chris HOHMANN, is manager & consultant in an international consulting firm. He deals with industrial and logistics performance.
Production in the shop handles hardware, raw material, tangible products and deals with physical flows.
manageable only by dedicated personnel.
Administrative job is about handling information, data, immaterial stuff by essence, "produced" (generated) and / or converted / transformed. Flows here are information flows.
As a result, only few procedures and work guide exist, if any. This means the job is done in a manner people think it is the best, or at least the most convenient, way to do it.
The famous 7 types of wastes the lean manufacturing is fighting against exist also in administrative jobs and the transposition from workshop jobs to office jobs is easy (see table page 3).
Office activities, as industrial or sales activities, are facing growing competitive pressure.
Productivity of tertiary activities Office work has long been considered as strongly linked to personnel's skill and competencies, including the capacity to organize the own job. The office itself (desk, furniture, files, computer...) is often considered as private ground, customizable and
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Office and Administration staff need to measure their productivity, then to improve it to keep up with competition.
Develop services nobody wants is the 8th type of waste. Not grasping improvement opportunities is the ninth. Read more about it on HC online
Lean Office, Lean Administration Paradigm shift in the offices The execution tasks in the offices are given to skilled and qualified personnel, getting generally higher pay then execution personnel in workshops. Long the difference in empowerment and responsibilities between these two categories could justify the difference of treatment. Since empowerment of production staff, promotion of multi competence and polyvalence, this difference exists no more.
Conversely, delocalization of administrative tasks, thanks to possibilities of information new technologies, to low cost countries, now raises the question of productivity in domestic administrative jobs. Models form industry can help tertiary activities Since administrative jobs have to standardize, organize, measure and improve, industry can provide mature tools and methods, as well as proven models.
Improve administrative productivity Improvement possibilities in tertiary activities are identical to those in industrial activities: turn the 7 types of wastes into savings. How? With process analysis! Any process can be described with 4 basic activities: 1. Transform 2. Check the Quality / Check the Quantity 3. Storage, waiting, WIP 4. Transportation, handling Once the process description done, the "as is" state is shown. Next step is to sort out value added tasks from nonvalue added tasks, then to reduce (ideally to eliminate) non-value added tasks, the Lean approach qualifies as wastes. Therefore it is necessary to build a future state, which the associated action plan will help turn into reality. This type of analysis and the tools and methods are standards from the industry, and fully adaptable to office activities.
In office jobs, Production of physical goods or raw material transformation is replaced by production of data, information, reports, etc. Material is made of figures, data, transformed into orders, memos, balance sheets, etc. The checking of job execution, quality and conformity checks of results exist also in administration tasks: readings, validation, signatures, approvals… Storage most often shows in the height of the piles files and documents waiting for treatment, mail to process, forms to fill or exploit. Finally all these tasks need transportation and handling of documents, mail and files. Process and flow analysis forms, well known by engineering people for workshop job analysis, are usable for administrative process analysis. Yet "office specific models" have been developed, including people / job owner / function identification, which is generally not the case for workshops.
The whole set is known as lean office or lean administration.
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Lean Office, Lean Administration The place of copy machine, a strategic choice!
Improve administrative productivity
In office work optimization assignment, analysis show the distance and number of walks to and from copy machine or printers of all the users accumulate hundreds of kilometers and lost hours a year.
Administrative jobs are spoiled by useless tasks, redundancies, extended delays…
The correct relocation of these peripherals allows saving of tens of thousand euros, just by reducing useless non-added value walks.
The difficulty lays in the fact that everybody concerned is convinced to do the job the best he/she cans!
Wastes? In offices as well! Like in workshops, process analysis will reveal existence of numerous sources of waste. Since the 7 types of "generic" wastes have been demonstrated by Toyota engineers, analysts use to trace them in the processes. The table below shows the "original workshop version" and the transposition into office universe.
All are wastes which can be suppressed to improve performance!
To demonstrate there is room for improvement needs some diplomacy…
Transposition of lean manufacturing 7 types of waste to administrative
Workshops
Offices
1. Wastes from over production
Over production of documents and data, regardless to physical support media
2. Wastes from waiting times
administrative delays and wait times
3. Wastes from transportations
Transportation and moving of files and documents
4. Wastes from unnecessary inventories
Piles of files, documents or data
5. Wastes in fabrication process
unnecessary operations; multiple copies, checking
6. Unnecessary movements / motions
Unnecessary motions and walks
7. Wastes from defective parts
Scrap and rework of documents
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