Today we’ll be talking LEAN!
The last couple of years we have been seeing two parallel and conflicting demands on business services. At one hand we see business processes increase in complexity and unpredictability, while demands for accountability, regulatory compliance and security are becoming mandatory. Lean, a methodology originally based on predictability, can offer te helping hand when it comes to standardization.
As budgets become tighter, the need for a more systematic, and Lean approach to processes is compelling. As we will see, over time, companies can actually do more with less. Keep in mind this is not a quick fix, done overnight. It a change, a process in which all layers of the organization need to be involved and engaged.
Lean has proven itself as the most effective methodology for improving operations identifying and eliminating waste from work processes. Not only the manufacturing sector, but also Healthcare, Finance and service as the Logistic sector have found dramatic efficiencies and improvements by applying the LEAN principles.
To make it clear, Lean does not mean that people must work faster or “attach roller blades to move around faster”. In Lean, employees work at their regular ergonomic and intellectual speeds. The time savings come from finding and eliminating idle states e.g., waiting in numerous queues in the emergency departments, reduction of mistakes and rework, elimination of non-value adding tasks, and more streamlined movements of staff, equipment, patients, supplies etc.
And, most emphatically, Lean is not equivalent for “mean employee layoffs”, Lean is not mean! Quite the opposite is true: Lean improves human relations at work and changes the culture from the traditional “blaming and shaming” to teamwork and cooperation focused on the good of the (paying) customer.
#leanthinking #lean#efficiency#productivity
Peggy is a Lean Six Sigma master black belt at heart, a people’s people and bridge builder. I’ve worked at large multinationals in service and production industry. I am creative,analytic with a touch of geek. I have two lovely princesses, a wonderful husband and we live in sunny Curaçao
