The place for all of you Lean Gurus out there.
Thank-you to those that attended my Lean IE webinar yesterday. The topic was a Lean Project I performed at Wells fargo Financial. In addtion to reviewing the project, I demonstrated ProBalance and Workplace Planner. These are two lean software programs I used on the project. You may view or download the slides I showed yesterday using the link below:
Wells Fargo Lean Process Flow Using Proplanner (2 MB PPT File)
Share your lean success with other lean gurus.
The best way to learn lean is to share your successes with others. We have brought many companies together within the service industry to share their lean journeys. The dialog between companies during lean benchmarking exchanges has been mutually beneficial for all companies involved. If your are interested in benchmarking your successes with others please contact us or post your comments on this site. Once again the goal is to provide a forum that is a joint learning opportunity for all companies involved. For example Share your lean success with other lean gurus at Wells Fargo Financial, and Wells Fargo Home Mortgage.
April 30 – May 2, 2007, Orange County Convention Center, Orlando, Florida. The ASQ sponsored event: “World Conference on Quality and Improvement” is designed for all levels of quality practitioners. I will be co-presenting during session W17 at 9:30am on Wednesday, May 2nd with Bill Casey from Quest Diagnostics. The title of our presentation is “A Simple 10 Step Kaizen Method for Leaning a Service Process Flow.” The session will cover the successful implementation of a 10-step Kaizen event at Quest Diagnostics to facilitate quick improvements as well as provide another example from Wells Fargo.
I had the opportunity to attend a two day training course put on by the Lean Enterprise Institute. This course was held at the Wells Fargo Imaging Production Facility in Eagan, MN in February 2007. The course highlighted the importance of being able to manage work and create standard tasks to reduce variability. This is an important concept of Lean: If the work processes are not standard then you cannot effectively measure and improve them. The instructor was Sammy Obara who is an associate with the Lean Enterprise Institute, and he is affiliated with HONSHA, which is a group of former engineers from Toyota. Sammy was very knowledgeable and he puts on a pretty good course. The only real criticism I found was that many of his examples were from Toyota that did not transfer well to service industry processes. However, if you are looking for a standard work course, his training is definitely thorough enough for most beginner to intermediate level Lean students.
February 27th – March 1, 2007, Orlando, Florida. The 2007 INTERNATIONAL LEAN & SIX SIGMA CONFERENCE is for intermediate to expert knowledge levels of Lean and Six Sigma. Many presentations will require a sound understanding of Six Sigma.
I will be presenting during Session 3 at 1:30pm on Wed, February 28th. The title of my presentation is “Finance Company uses Lean to Improve Document Retention.”
Abstract: Lean techniques were used to save a document retention operation that was drowning in paper because financial documents were arriving faster than the department could process. Lean methodology was adopted and all manual processes were evaluated for waste, redundancy, and necessity. As a result, capacity increased so much that all backlog was cleared. Customer service delays reduced from over 14 days to less than 24 hours. Cost savings were realized, as staffing levels were re-allocated to value added positions within the company.
The following processes are examples which could be examined for the application of Lean tools:
These represent general processes that exist in service or transactional organizations. The first step in a Lean company is to identify your opportunity for improvement.
Most service based companies such as financial organizations can reduce operating expenses through the reduction of waste a.k.a. non-value added work. For example, activities that require walking are considered non value-added. Also, process steps related to paper flow, order taking, communicating with customers, and data entry may be evaluated to see if they are value added by using new business practices such as Lean for Services.
The most significant factor allowing manufacturing to compete is the use of Lean manufacturing. Lean is based on the world-class practices of the Toyota Motor Corporation. Lean is comprised reducing waste, reducing costs increasing inventory turns, while increasing throughput.
Lean Manufacturing principles apply for both the repetitive, larger manufacturers, as well as the prototype shop that only produces one of a kind. The Lean Store has primarily focused materials for the small shop – the job shops. For example, BackStreet Lean – Solutions for the Job Shop – Plant Edition was written by John Maachia, Sr., Owner and CEO of Advance Turning & Manufacturing, Inc. in Jackson, Michigan, a plant of about 80+ employees. John, along with 4 other small shops, shared their best practices in this particular book.
The current healthcare system must improve due to the enormous defect rate (estimated at nearly 45% by the New England Journal of Medicine), premium cost escalation, nursing shortages, etc. General Motor Corporation reported that healthcare expenditures equate to $1,525 per car. This cost is more than the steel to make the car! The insult to injury is that a significant portion of the costs related to healthcare services is waste. The national numbers for wastes in healthcare are between 30 and 40%.
The Lean Office has arrived! The 21st century will have businesses competing like never before. This competition will required more streamlined processes throughout all industries and their associated processes. The businesses that survive will embrace the tools comprised within the Lean Office. The Lean Office tools are: value stream mapping, takt time, pitch, Just-In-Time, continuous flow, standard work, runners, cycle time, data collection, document tagging, kanbans, in-process supermarkets, First In First Out, measurements, office layout, office file system, pull systems, visual controls, and last but not least 5S.
