Office Lean
Today’s reading pick:
Office Lean - Understanding and Implementing Flow in a Professional and Administrative Environment
As an operations guy Ken Eakin shows how to use lean management techniques to support your employees to meet their targets and fulfill the customer expectations. Lean management therefore relies on two principles:
Balance: when everything is balanced the work flows without interruption
Continuity: allows employees to finish their tasks with only minor interruptions
Ken recommends a Lean Manager to implement continuity and balance in order to maintain and deliver high value to the customers faster.
This book isn’t a fast read, with its solid information it provides a guide for managers which want to have a solution oriented organization.
We recommend this book to managers that are seeking for a guide to reshape their processes to a value adding work flow.
Key take aways of this book
Conventional management models don’t work well in an economy dominated by services and information as a product
You can change the behavior of people with a systematic approach and not by only providing information
Management has to see their organization as a system that creates results
Workflow doesn’t mean dividing the organization in work streams, see the workflow as a system that is interlinked
The value stream is the starting point of all actions, separating Man/Machine/Material/etc. is an outdated point of view
Efficiency in offices starts with scheduling tasks
Kanban is a great tool that can be used to steer tasks in offices
Expose information from experts to the complete organization
Balance your workflow in the office to avoid bottle necks
Fulfill your customers expectations and you will get your return on investment
Lean leaders coach and support their employees - they are the role models who walk the talk
Enjoy reading and improving!
