Can Lean techniques, mastered on the factory floor, drive costs from the front office?
How much money is your company losing due to wasted effort and low productivity of knowledge workers employed in your business processes? How many opportunities are lost? How many customers are irritated? Teaching your knowledge workers effective planning techniques based on Lean principles can solve these problems.
Imagine running a production line without knowing each day what to make and in what quantities. Crazy, right? The lack of that critical information guarantees uneven production, overburdened workers, and waste -- a disaster in the world of Lean. Yet this is precisely the situation for most knowledge workers, even those in Lean organizations.
Whereas Lean line workers and managers have learned how to plan their workflow to keep the manufacturing process running smoothly and efficiently, knowledge workers generally don't plan effectively, if at all.
The only way to manage the multiple value streams that flow through them is to plan their work like a Lean production line.
Lean Principles Apply To The Front Office Too
Whether workers are building spacecraft assemblies or budget spreadsheets, they must know their production schedule in order to level the flow of work.
Heijunka is central to Lean philosophy because it plays a critical role in avoiding the 3 M's --
mura,
muri and
muda -- that are anathema to Lean. Leveling production, of course, requires Lean workers to plan their output properly, which means knowing what they're going to build, what materials they'll need, and when they'll need them. Lean plant managers understand this fact well.
Surprisingly, few knowledge workers seem to understand this. Although they work with ideas and information instead of physical materials, the rules are identical. Poor planning (or no planning) among the majority of knowledge workers results in the same terrible
mura,
muri and
muda that manufacturing workers face.
View article on one page