Waste is a great starting point and a fundamental concept in Lean Office, to assist in making immediate cost savings and removing unnecessary tasks for employees.
If you understand your current processes, it provides an amazing opportunity to bring teams large or small together to discuss each step in turn, and to identify one or more of the eight wastes.
An action plan subsequently identifies how to eliminate the waste and assigns responsibility to one or more people to make it happen.
It's also an effective team building opportunity, by allowing experienced employees to talk in depth about their working role... an area which is often overlooked by managers. Thoughts and ideas for improvement often go unheard as a result.
Here are the eight wastes (DOWNTIME) and some examples of where you can find them in an Office environment:
D Defects
O Overproduction
W Waiting
N non utilised talent
T Transportation
I Inventory
M Motion
E Extra processing
DEFECTS
Work that contains errors
Work that is lacking information and results in rework and delay
Additional unnecessary work performed on a process caused by unclear processes
Too much sorting
Too much repetition
OVERPRODUCTION
Providing a service or information before the customer actually needs or wants it
WAITING
Waiting for people
Waiting for paper
Waiting for machines to output
Waiting for information
Waiting for responses
Waiting for approvals
Waiting for signatures
Waiting for supplies
Waiting for meeting room availability
Waiting for the next step in the process
Waiting for attendees late for meetings
NON UTILISED TALENT
Not using an employee's mental and creative skills
Not using employees experience and knowledge
TRANSPORTATION
Moving information from place to place
Poor office layout
Carrying documents from one office to another
Too much movement to a printer or copier machine
INVENTORY
Having more information that the process needs e.g. extra report fields
Too much stationary
Too many files
Too many email attachments
Unnecessary movement of people or parts between processes
Too many copies of documents printed
A work unit sitting on someone's desk
MOTION
Too much searching for information
Too many mouse clicks to perform one task
EXTRA PROCESSING
Creating more than the customer wants
Over checking
Too many reviews
Copying too many people on emails
Replying to All on emails
More work or higher quality than is required by the customer
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