Sustaining Results in the Lean Office

At a Lean Office seminar, attendees raised the question of how to maintain office kaizen results. As with any type of kaizen, several factors need to be in place to ensure that the results achieved during an intensive week of improvement activities are sustained over the long term. These factors include management support, workforce engagement and communication, prompt implementation of ideas, and more.

The Power of Visual Management in Lean Office Implementations: Breaking Down Barriers and Boosting Efficiency

The one thing that matters more in Lean Office implementations (more so than factory kaizen) is making the process visual. In simple terms this means… the walls must go! The cubicles must go! Bring on the open office! Improve visibility, communication, space use, 5S, and enable work to flow and pull.

Why is it that we are willing to remove visual barriers in the factory in the name of Lean, but there is so much resistance to removing walls, partitions, and cubicles in the office? It has a lot to do with culture, and how people perceive “office work” to be different from other work such as in the factory.

The Threat of Attitude: Overcoming Resistance to Office Kaizen for Sustained Improvement

Letting the attitude that work in the office is somehow different from other types of value-added work exist is the biggest threat to sustaining gains through office kaizen. It is no different than removing the personal toolboxes or removing the inventory in front of the machine. Both represent comfort and safety and require education, training, and a dose of “What’s in it for me?” to overcome.

Practicing What We Preach

We at Gemba Academy use kaizen in our own operations. We practice what we preach. We have removed the walls and work in an open office. The more we work in a Lean Office (open room) the more we wonder how we ever managed to work inside walls.

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