Lean Tools In Non-Manufacturing Areas

Lean Tools In Non-Manufacturing Areas

Non-manufacturing sectors can use lean principles to cut waste, enhance workflows, and increase customer value.

In VUCA World, manufacturing companies are consistently seeking manners to become more efficient, while the focus in the lean in non-manufacturing organization is typically on different areas like new products or services. So, Sometimes, they don’t prioritize removing waste as a beginning point and have more space to run in this regard.

Additionally, while it is easy to see the work & identify the problems on the manufacturing floor, an office environment in an organization’s transformation can be delicate when it comes to following the actual work that is taking place.

Since service processes are not objectively observable, a few benefits are tools like visual management that make invisible work processes visible, and techniques that particularly develop a team member’s creative problem-solving & critical thinking abilities to the fullest.

Lean, Which is something for manufacturing companies, Right? No, it’s Wrong. Lean is a methodology presently used by most leading companies, which permits them to attain competitive advantage, provides the organization with increased flexibility & cost reduction.

If your service organization doesn’t exercise lean transformation, then perform this small experiment:

Just find a team that performs the same work, such as responding to consumer calls or recording consumer transactions. Provide a distinct color pad of post-it notes to each team member and select a specific process all team members complete regularly. Ensure to ask the team in advance if they think each of them is completing the sequence of steps the same way. As they think that they are doing the same set of steps in the same order.

Now, ask them to note down the sequence of steps that they take to do the work on their post-it note. Once all have finished their post-its, stick their sequence of notes—one row for each team member, one above the other—onto a whiteboard.

After completing the exercise, take a look. I can assure you that none of the rows will be the same length or have the same steps in the same order. That’s why, it is even more essential for service organizations—with variable, long, complicated processes with several decision points—to utilize the tools that lean provides us to make processes visible. If your team members aren’t doing the work in the same way, how can you assure that your consumers are getting constant high-quality services every time?

Lean isn’t just about manufacturing. It is about standardizing work processes to make problems visible & developing your team members’ critical thinking capability so that they can solve those problems & enhance work processes.

The non lean production definition is the work that comprises all processes but doesn’t directly create the product such as human resource, purchasing, control, supply chain, IT, finance, marketing, etc.

Both types of companies share something in common: they are nothing more than a group of people & a bunch of processes trying to deliver value to a set of customers and Lean in Non-Manufacturing process appeal to each. To flatter lean, each company needs to cognizant of removing the waste in their recent processes that allow you to deliver greater value to the consumers.

Lean Tools in Improving Non-manufacturing Areas:1. 5S

This tool helps to create a clean, efficient & well-organized work environment. It provides a swift and visible achievement while training the labor forces for other highly developed improvement efforts. It is considered very important for any type of business transformation.

2. Six Sigma

It is a broadly popular & quality Lean tool used in non-manufacturing areas. In GE (General Electric), the method of Six Sigma has widened to include program and project management regulations and tools. Some of these are complementary tools to lean manufacturing.

3. Self-Managed Teams

With the natural continuance of Lean work settings, employees manage to work as alliance teams to attain the company’s objectives. Toyota Production System used this idea to support & transform their manpower into a self-managed workforce. Capable of managing their areas independently with lessen supervision & oversights. Often, self-managed teams interact voluntarily with internal suppliers & customers to advance area effectiveness and tackle area problems.

4. Visual Management

Visual management is vital for digital transformation and it is a communication technique that uses visual aids to convey messages swifter & more efficiently. Work instructions can often be clarified and far easier to understand when visual aids are involved. It is particularly useful for tasks that are difficult to explain with words alone.

How to Deploy Lean in Non-Manufacturing Areas?

Organizations require to understand that lean is all about people. People who are the only assets, you are trying to transform them. So, It‘s the management’s responsibility to ensure this happens.

• Define the objective & the stretch goals that you think will define operational excellence for you and Lean manufacturing concepts. certainly, Things like quality, customer service, productivity, visual control, lead time, etc. These all need to be desirable and not just some small increment from your present state.
• Next, develop a value stream organizational structure and deploy these operational excellence goals down to the value stream leaders. So, Report them weekly on their progress toward these goals. This will involve everyone in the organization working on a simple set of objectives that once attained will set the company apart.
• Every company that wants to survive in VUCA World and maintain leadership transformation a has process to follow. Nearly every business process generates waste—Muda in Japanese—meaning any activity that doesn’t offer any value to the customer. Now, guide your people on how to find & eliminate the waste.

  Briefly train them on lean fundamentals. But, the actual learning comes from participating in kaizen teams and attaining big gains in a short period. Further, Kaizen means change for the better and it enables lean transformation in an organization. Kaizen in nonmanufacturing is a vital element of lean, it’s a philosophy of constant improvement fueled with hands-on employee engagement. It is generally important to have senior management on 5-6 full-week kaizen teams per year so they can begin to see and understand the amount of waste that exists.

• The next step is to design the process elements step by step. Use value stream mapping to present you a picture of not only the steps however the time it takes for each, in addition to any waiting time. Any Lean in Non-Manufacturing process can be divided into 3 elements: value add, non-value-add but necessary, or waste.

  In a 30-step process, it is not unusual to find that there are only 5 or 6 steps that add value. So, The value stream mapping will assist you in noticing this. And eliminate the waste and of course, substantially shorten the time that it takes to finish the task.

• Once you’ve got the value stream map laid out, examine the work as it occurs.

Lean in Finance Organization1. Focus on Value from your Consumers’ Perspective

Customers of finance & accounting include investors and lenders, regulatory agencies, decision-makers within the business itself. Understanding value in Lean in Non-Manufacturing concepts from the customers’ perspective allows you to stop performing whole processes that don’t produce value, instead of wasting time enhancing them.

It may be alluring to "not bother" the customers, but that’s a big mistake. We have seen hundreds of accounting man-hours instantly removed in a Lean workshop when the client simply says, "Well…I don’t use those reports.".

2. Remove Non-value Adding Activities

Scattered within the process are irrelevant reviews, rework, overproduction and over processing, unnecessary movement & transportation, waiting time, and other non-value added activities to the end products. These non-value-adding activities consume resources, delay delivery, add costs & complexity. Lean in Non-Manufacturing is very effective at the organized identification and elimination of nonvalue-added activities. Hence, By mapping the process & identifying non-value-adding tasks. Improvement teams can address each element of waste and notably improve process performance.

3. Transform Problems Into "Good Things"

In every financial close or budget review, your staff spends a lot of time reworking exceptions, rewriting reports, and preparing reclassification and adjusting entries. So, In the Lean in Non-Manufacturing approach to quality, problems are viewed as opportunities to enhance customer value & improve process capability. Lean aims to solve each problem by labeling the root causes at their source, as soon as they occur. Once the root cause is identified, the team changes the process to prevent the problem from repeating.

Conclusion

The operating facility of Lean Manufacturing generates various long-term benefits that are not always noticeable to those who are considering accepting it. It provides a reasonable framework to define an organization’s objective and decision-making to evaluate the needs of all stakeholders. It results in the creation of a highly engaged employee culture and improves their productivity level.

This Article is originally taken from: Lean Tools In Non-Manufacturing Areas - Learn Transformation

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