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