What is Lean Kaizen ?

Monday Morning blues....

Have you ever sat down at your desk on a Monday morning and
thought, "I've got so much work to get through, I don't know
how I'm going to do it? I guess we all have mornings like that.

Well at least every Monday!

I have a couple of questions for you.


What is it that is making you so busy?


Could there be a better way of looking at things?

What is Lean kaizen?

When I first thought about developing "Lean kaizen" I had the notion of helping people really
make a difference to their working lives. How could I help people to de-stress and take more
control over their own work environment?

Enter stage left Lean kaizen.

Lean literally means "with no fat ". Kai literally means "change" and zen "for the better".

I had the notion of joining these thoughts together.

Lean is if you like the vision of how it could be, and  kaizen the
way to get there.

After I had that idea, Lean kaizen was born. So, kaizen means
change for the better or continuous improvement.

Very nice, but how does that actually help you?

The whole kaizen ideology started many years ago and I won't bore you with its history in
this particular article.

Suffice to say, kaizen is all about helping you eliminate wasted time from your work-life.

Simple as that.

Busy doing what?

"But I don't waste my time at work; I'm always very busy, in fact too busy most of the time,
especially on Mondays."

As I travel all over the country, visiting large city centre offices, I am constantly amazed
at how busy and stressed most people are these days.

People have to do more and more with fewer resources.

The thing that I find the most staggering though is how "busy" people are on tasks, which
add little or no value to their work life or their customer's experience.

"Ok then, clever clogs; give me some examples of what you mean".

"What are some of these so called time wasters?"

1. Transporting Information around the office

If you actually take time, to track a document through your office, and then work out the
number of people it visits, the length of time it stays with any individual, and the actual
distance it travels, you may be in for a shock!

One technique I teach people to help identify this type of transportation waste is the
Spaghetti Diagram - but more of that in future information.

Suggestion

Track a document through your own office and see what happens to it.

It may open your eyes to transportation waste you never even knew existed!

2. Looking for items

On average each person wastes one hour each day looking for items.

To be world class you should be able to put your hands on anything around your desk area
within 30 seconds.

How many of us can say we have that capability?

Whether it be correspondence, case files, stationery or information on your PC.

In general, we are often not particularly well organised and tend to allow clutter to gather
all around us.

If I has £1 for the number of times I've heard people say "I know my work area looks a bit
untidy but I know where everything is" I would be a rich man.

The reality is that people often have shabby work areas and don't actually have a clue
where anything is.

Suggestion

Ask yourself if you could succeed at the 30 second challenge?

If not, start to think about your own workspace and some of the things you could do to
improve it.

3. Wasting time storing information that is no longer required

On average people store 50% more "information" than they actually need .If you multiply
that across a large busy office, and include shared areas, that amounts to a lot of wasted
space.

Not only that, but you have twice as much "information" to go through, to find anything.

Another technique I teach people is called "3S in the Office".

This technique shows people how to banish clutter, and create a well organised safe,
work environment that staff can take pride in.

Does your office have too much information in it?

Is your PC hard drive, crammed with data, with little or no organisation?

Suggestion

Think about getting rid of that excess information.

These are just a few of examples of things we do that waste  our time and that can be
eliminated without any significant costs.

If you start to take action on some of these wastes then you will have made a great
start towards moving from "being busy" to being effective.

So in conclusion I have one final thought for you.

 "What are you busy doing?"

Try to think about the Lean kaizen methodology of creating a vision of how things could be,
and then think about ways to identify, and then eliminate wasted time from your daily routine.

Lean  - Vision of how it could be.

Kaizen - How we are going to get there.

Hope this helps.

Best regards,

Graham Ross

Back to Lean kaizen Home from Lean Kaizen article 

Get free Lean Kaizen Toolkit

Back to Lean Kaizen Articles

 

Get Graham Ross's New Book Tools for Success here :