Office Lean : understanding and implementing Flow in a professional and administrative environment / Ken Eakin.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Eakin, Ken, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Lean manufacturing.

Organizational effectiveness.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (277 pages)

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Productivity Press, 2019.

Summary:

Lean has proven itself as an exceptional business system in manufacturing and a variety of other sectors, such as supply chain, retail, and healthcare. Where Lean has not yet made much of an impact is in professional "white-collar" industries such as banking and insurance, technology services, or government. Why? It is not, as many have assumed, a matter of Lean being irrelevant to "knowledge work," but rather a problem of it being poorly understood and therefore poorly applied in professional office settings. This book closes the gap between Lean's promise, on the one hand, of innovation, business growth, and sustainable competitive advantage; and, on the other, the too frequent reality of Lean's application ending in disappointing results. While nearly every major professional business -- including the digital giants like Apple, Google and Amazon -- has attempted to apply Lean concepts in some way (sometimes under the name Agile), its practice in white-collar industries typically ends up being limited to a small bunch of highly-specialized experts making small, fairly inconsequential improvements in isolated areas, leaving leaders wondering how to make Lean's transformative potential work on a broader basis. The purpose of the book is to help Lean practitioners (both leaders/managers and coaches/consultants) who work in professional office environments gain purchase on the amazing, transformative results Lean can bring to all companies. Overturning the common perception that Lean is about imposing overly rigid rules, or eliminating waste, the book presents Lean as a dynamic, flexible, people-centric philosophy that delivers outstanding financial results by improving both employee engagement and customer experience. The book explains, in simple terms, what Lean is -- and what Lean isn't -- enabling office professionals to understand how it can be successfully applied to their complex office-based work environments. It combines practical explanations of the most important core concepts of the Lean philosophy with relevant, practical, real-world examples from the fields of accounting, finance, insurance, IT, HR and government.

Contents:

Cover

Half TItle

Title Page

Copyright Page

Contents

Preface: Caring for People

Acknowledgments

Author

Introduction: We Don't Make Widgets

Notes

Part I: Grasping the Situation

1: The Legacy of Industrial Management

Chaos

Industrial Management

Compliance Machines

Three Main Takeaways

2: Two Types of Efficiency

The Persistence of Resource Efficiency

The School of Mass Production

The Negative Consequences of Resource Efficiency

Doubling Down

Busy Does Not Mean Productive

Flow-ver Dose

Escaping the Trade-Off

3: Changing the System

Respect for People

Information Does Not Create Behavior

Thinking of Organizations as Systems

Changing Thinking and Behavior

Systems Drive Behavior

Behavior Drives Thinking

Focus on Flow

What about Waste?

The Waste We Cannot See

Part II: Designing For Flow

4: Understanding Flow

Understanding Flow

Handoffs

So How Do I Create Flow?

Focus on Wait Time

Compress the Value Stream

Flow Creates Capacity

5: Busy Does Not Mean Productive

Activity Is Often Confused for Work

People Are Not the Problem

6: Design Principle I: Continuity

7: An Accounting Story

8: Design Principle II: Balance

Bucket Brigades

Bob the Bottleneck

Invisible Bottlenecks

Balance

9: Creating Balance

People

Time

Work

Dealing with Variation

Agility

10: The CapCell Experiment

11: The Seven Gates of Hell

Countermeasures

Managing Customer Experience

Managing Variation.

Three Main Takeaways

Part III: Thinking Beyond Flow

12: Prerequisites to Problem Solving

Step 1: Define Your Customers

Step 2: Understand Customer Value

Step 3: Visualize Your Workflow

Step 4: Create Flow

Step 5: Solve Problems

Solving Problems the Slow Way

13: Start with Standards

Reflection

Start with Standards

The Challenge of Standards

Everyone Hates Standards

Eight Big Misconceptions about Standards

Misconception #1: Standards Are Coercive

Misconception #2: Standards Are Always Very Precise and Detailed

Misconception #3: Standards Only Apply to Highly Repetitive Work

Misconception #4: Standards Need to Be Created and Enforced Centrally

Misconception #5: Standards Kill Creativity

Misconception #6: Standards Are Not Customer Friendly

Misconception #7: Measurements Are Not Standards

Misconception #8: Standards Are Inflexible and Can Rarely Be Changed

Summary

14: Using Standards to Create Flow

Note

15: Lean Thinking and the Digital Age

So, What Do We Mean by Digital?

Lean First, Automate Second

Automation and Continuity

16: Automation and Imbalance

17: Lean Leadership and Strategy

Development of People

Connecting Functions and Systems

Go See

T-Shaped Leadership

Operations Is the Strategy

Conclusion: Work Is a Human System

Appendix: Value Stream, System, and Process: Understanding Three Fundamental Terms

Generally Speaking

Index.

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

0-429-51565-0

0-429-20381-0

0-429-51222-8

9780429203817

OCLC:

1121596492