Office Overview
The Lean Office has arrived! The 21st century will have businesses competing like never before. This competition will required more streamlined processes throughout all industries and their associated processes. The businesses that survive will embrace the tools comprised within the Lean Office. The Lean Office tools are: value stream mapping, takt time, pitch, Just-In-Time, continuous flow, standard work, runners, cycle time, data collection, document tagging, kanbans, in-process supermarkets, first in first out, measurements, office layout, office file system, pull systems, visual controls, and last but not least 5S.
The majority of products produced or services provided require a considerable amount of time and energy to ensure a satisfied customer. In this endeavor, the customer can be won or lost due to administrative processes that go along with those transactions. Consider the following type of transactions:
• Entering a customer order
• Generating an invoice
• Creating an engineering drawing
• Being admitted to a hospital
• Opening a bank account
• Hiring an employee
• Filling out a medical form
• Filing an insurance claim
• Generating a quote
• Ordering item on-line
• Depositing a check in your local bank
These transactions represent how we interact within society to ensure products and services are provided for, profit is obtained, and the customer is delighted. As the economy expands, global competition is there to provide similar product and services. Therefore, it is imperative costs are maintained or reduced with the same level of service. Lean Office principles and concepts can be applied to any administrative process. The organizations that embrace Lean will be the ones that reduce costs, grow, and provide job security to their employees.
The Lean Office team has over 75 years of the application of Lean in administrative settings. Some of the team’s results have included:
- Reduction in data entry errors for customer service (12 customer service representatives of 99.5%, from over 1200 a month to less than 8 errors per month
- Engineering milestone completion rate improvement of 12%, from a 88.5% milestone completion rate to 99.8% milestone completion rate
- Month end closing for Accounts Payables from 5 days to 1 day
- Average customer quote time reduced from 1.5 days to less than 1 hour
The Lean Office team includes:
Tom Fabrizio has been implementing Lean Systems for more than twenty years. His original Lean training was by leading experts in improvement technologies, including Dr. Shigeo Shingo (co-architect of the Toyota Production System), Dr. Ryuji Fukuda, and experts from Japan Institute of Plant Maintenance. After leaving Productivity in the mid-1990s, Tom co-founded the Healthcare Coalition, whose purpose it was to implement Lean in the medical industry, especially in hospitals and clinics. He later founded Lean Manufacturing Tools. Tom has extensive experience in applying Lean in emergency rooms, operating rooms, patient care facilities, administrative processes, and inventory control. Tom holds an engineering degree from Tufts University, a Masters Degree in Education from Northeastern University, and a Law Degree from England School of Law.
Don Tapping has worked over twenty-five years to eliminate waste and improve bottom-line results. Don authored the best selling book, Value Stream Management for the Lean Office (Productivity Press 2003), Who Hollered Fore?, and numerous other books on business performance - setting the bar for administrative Lean improvements. He continues to enlighten organizations with his ability to design step-by-step implementation methodologies identifying processes that require improvement, and then introducing proactive steps to improve or redesign them – reducing costs, boosting performance, and increasing customer (patient) satisfaction. Don has a B.A. from The University of Michigan and an MBA from The University of Notre Dame.
Roger Kremer has been involved with Lean for over 30 years. Working for Aeroquip Corporation and Eaton Corporation he managed and reorganized a number of plants with the Lean initiatives on the manufacturing floor as well as those critical processes in the front. Many of these organizations received top customer awards. He was involved in developing the Lean Assessment for Eaton and completed over 100 plant assessments, scoring these plants in Lean, creating action plans for their improvement, and helping them with their Lean initiatives that significantly improved operational excellence and reduced cost. Roger is the author of several books on Lean: The Lean Office Pocket Handbook, The Lean Primer, and The Lean Assessment. Roger has a degree in Math-Physics from St Joseph’s College, and an Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering degree from The Ohio State University.
Has the Lean Office arrived in your organization?