A lean office

‘Lean’ is often considered the realm of manufacturing. I believe it also has application in an office environment. To recap, ‘lean’ is a manufacturing method pioneered by the Japanese and picked up by the American automobile industry in the 1950s after they begun to loose market share to Japan in quite a significant way. ‘Lean’ involves using less of everything: materials, people, time, effort etc. The idea is that everything you do has to add value to the end customer. In a manufacturing context, this is the value added through the production process. For example, goods sitting around as work in progress (WIP) are a waste. The resources used to store the product are seen as an unnecessary cost to the customer. 

Everyone has a customer right? So whether you are in manufacturing or not, whatever you are producing, whether it be a good or a service is going to be bought and consumed by an end customer. So is what YOU do adding value to the end customer?

If you are working in an office environment, think more broadly about how you add value to the customer. Start with identifying your customer. This would be the customer of the business you are working for. If you don’t have direct impact/involvement with the customer either trace backwards (or forwards) between your role and theirs. This means identifying the people you have involvement with within the business. How do you add value to them? How do you help them to do their jobs better, faster and with less cost?

Next identify what you do in your day-to-day work that does not add value to yourself or anyone else. This means identifying business costs that could be reduced, things that could be done to higher quality or done faster. Ask yourself, if this the best possible way I could do this?

Really great examples of common office practices that could be done better are filing and stationary. Do you have filing cabinets sitting in your office that you haven’t opened in the last 6-12 months? Yes? Get rid of it! If you haven’t looked at it in that long you’re probably not going to. If you work in an office with 60 odd other people and if even half of them get rid of all the crap they’re not actually using imagine how much space you’d have. Space costs money; is the use of that space adding value to the customer? Stationary is the other one. How much space does your stationary collection take up? Do you stock up on stuff just in case there is a run on staplers? Inventory systems used in manufacturing environments can also be used for things like stationary cupboards. For example, you only have one stapler in the cupboard, when that goes you buy one more stapler. There are stationary suppliers now that come in and automatically replenish your cupboard when it gets past minimum levels. You use less space as a result.

These are really only two examples of the potential of ‘lean’ practices in an office environment. Other ways to save time, money and improve quality can be identified with other ‘lean’ techniques such as process flow mapping, problem solving and 5S (sort & discard, shine and inspect, signpost and order, simplify and standardise, sustain), and visual management, just to name a few. The key is to continually identify opportunities for improvement. The way I see it is that you work towards making yourself redundant. This can be quite a challenging idea for people. The right mindset is needed. Rather than, what work fills in your 9 to 5 day? What work adds value to your customer?