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Lean Office is The
Way to Go
about Your Administrative Tasks
Enrique Mora
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Any business or human
enterprise requires some or many administrative tasks. Most of us have felt
frustrated more than once when these administrative procedures take too
long or have errors. Many minor and big projects get stagnated and lose
their deadlines just because of a bureaucratic procedure that did not help
us comply with the regulations, delivery of supplies, staffing, and many
other issues.
Recently, many companies
which have already experienced the advantages of Lean Implementations in
their Manufacturing facilities have started to spread the word to their
offices by implementing Lean Office Systems. The results have been impressive. The reality is we all need to
become more efficient in order to remain competitive and our administrative
support should be no exception.
Who is going to tell us
what can be improved?
As in all Lean
disciplines, Lean Office can be easily implemented because the knowledge and wisdom already exist in your office. All you
have to do is ask the cooperation and ideas from all your Team!
One Real
Estate manager who attended one of our seminars on Lean Office brought up
this brilliant idea:
"...every week I meet with all my people and ask them:
Which of the tasks they are asked to perform make No Sense to them"
This
has allowed that office to save thousands of dollars and many hours of labor
and delays in unnecessary:
paperwork, trips, copies, waiting for signatures, duplicated operations and
a few other actions. Lean Office and its disciplines have represented an
important difference in the way they do business.
As we know, most
mistakes and errors are Not the fault of the people who make them,
but the system in place. Lean office can help companies prevent mistakes,
reduce operation cost, and improve their
systems. The actions to improve this efficiency will take place in several
fronts:
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The Lean Office
concept will improve way we receive,
answer, and transfer incoming calls, emails, postal mail
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The design of the
lean office layout allows for processes to flow faster and reduce
complications and sources of error
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The paths of human
communication within the offices and departments
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The design of
computer systems including:
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Forms with
pre-filled selectable fields options
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Integration of
Inventories, suppliers, accounts payable and receivable to avoid
running out of products, parts, services, etc
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Standard screens
with automatic pre-filled customer data fields
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Error-proof
fields, etc
Indeed, lean office
provides standardization
of the way we conduct business and is a key element in the Customer Service
experience, all the people in the team must have the knowledge and skill to
take care of all kinds of issues in a very effective and efficient
way.
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Most
paperwork should be easily handed to the next step in their process
from one workstation to the next instead of being piled-up until
someone will transport them to the next station, or even Worse: sent
to a central Redistribution Station.
To implement this
kind of improvement may represent
the need to rearrange spaces, eliminate walls, open windows, etc.
This very lean office in the picture above, is using now only 30% of their original space and Contracts,
Invoices, Purchase Orders, Quotes, Expense accounts have been moving
in less than 25% of the traditional time.
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Some
traditional hierarchical lines of communication will need to
drastically change, allowing for people to openly communicate at all
levels in any direction with other employees independently of their
"department" or "division".
The "Tree" Organization Chart so common in the past Century
is now being transformed in a circular multidirectional chart so all
the employees know each other's functions and know who to talk to
when they need some immediate help or collaboration. Their pictures help
everyone learn who is who. The lean office will show these charts in
several areas.
Pictures
Courtesy
of our Customer: IMAM, Sao Paulo, Brazil |
These are just a few
ideas and examples. The creativity of your own teams will be a key element
to implement Lean Strategies in your office. We can provide help and might
even be able to get State and Federal sponsorship for your
implementation.
I would strongly
recommend that you read William
E. Deming's Advice...
Don't hesitate to email
me anytime...
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