Office/Service Business Specific Services

The Lean Office – Allowing Work to Flow (Part I)
The Lean Office – Getting Work Flow (Part II)

The Lean Office – Allowing Work to Flow (Part I)

The practice of organizing your work space (5S — Sort-Set-Shine-Standardize-Sustain) and making your work visible puts the office in order, eliminates obvious process waste, and establishes the discipline required to implement work flow techniques, such as Standard Work and Process Cells. This event is focused on deploying 5S and Visual Controls specifically in the office environment. It covers: Overall 5S Office Area Deployment, Informational Data Area (i.e., databases, shared work group file directories, personal file directories and email folders) Deployment, Establishing standardized desktop layouts, and creating a visual office environment. This is a three to five day event, that includes as part of the training the actual deployment of 5S to optimize a predetermined office area within your facility. This area will serve as an example/model area to reference for future expanded deployment. Your team members participating in this event will be qualified to be trainers for 5S throughout your organization’s office environment including Informational Data Areas (computer systems).

Objectives:

• Train a group of your team members to serve as 5S trainers for Office Areas and Informational Data Areas (Computer Systems)
• Establish a standard for physical desks

Deliverables:

• Trained 5S office facilitators for your facility
• An example/model area setup for your team to reference as they role out 5S
• A detailed deployment plan for both 5S and Visual Controls

The Lean Office – Getting Work Flow (Part II)

Often in the office environment little attention has been spent on how work actually moves or flows through the area. Processes are often disjointed and setup by Functional Area verses the optimal path to please customers. In order, to get work to flow functions/operations are placed together and linked to enhance your customers’ value. Desired outcomes include shortened lead times (no batches of documents waiting to be worked on—“Make one, move one”); Built-in quality (allowing rapid feedback
on earlier quality problems); and team focus on pleasing the customer, not solely meeting individual functional department goals. This event also shows how to deploy standardize work and error proofing in the office environments to keep flow going after initial startup. This is a three to four day event, that includes as part of the training the actual deployment within a predetermined office area within your facility.

Objectives:

• Train a group of your team members to serve as facilitators in setting up office process cells, standardized work and deploying error proofing techniques.

Deliverables:

• Trained facilitators for your facility
• An example/model process cell established for your team to reference as they continue to role out more
• A detailed deployment plan.