This post addresses the second set of wastes in our series of 4 Office Kaizen discussions. There are 12 wastes when it comes to process, and they are briefly discussed below. Lareau (2003) calls our attention to avoid mixing some of the following wastes with some of the people wastes discussed in the first post of this series.
Control Waste: this waste refers to unnecessary and extreme supervision of work. It sometimes creates irrelevant tension in the work environment which, in turn, lowers employee morale. Work groups (or cells) are the ideal setting in an Office Kaizen environment. As well, clear metrics, strategic alignment, and personal development plans should help the organization to rapidly identify issues in the process.
Variability Waste: resources that are utilized due to outcomes that deviate from the expected or normal outcomes. These resources are typically involved with activities related to re-working solutions, recalling products, and amending services that did not deliver the expected outcome in the first place.
Tampering Waste: the effort required to adjust a process which has been arbitrarily changed without foresight, and the efforts to deal with the consequences of those changes. In an Office Kaizen environment, no arbitrary changes without foundation on metrics, impact on outcomes, and employee's morale would take place.
Strategic Waste: relates to value lost due to the efforts that are concentrated on short-term goals and/or immediate internal customer needs only, i.e. it does not impact the company's long term objectives. Normally, an Office Kaizen approach would be to look into the entire value chain and identify perils about the short-term gains versus the long term losses.
Reliability Waste: efforts related to the correction of unpredictable outcomes that are the fruit of unknown causes. The most likely approach to this situation in an Office Kaizen environment would be to have procedures, visual and/or job aids, and standards that inform the operator of the procedures associated with the unpredictable outcomes (call it the B plan).
Standardization Waste: efforts wasted to correct the variance among operators of the same task. In other words, one operator performs better than the other. The ideal solution here is that the best practice be followed by others, and that the best performer trains (or helps) the others to achieve the standard expected.
Sub-optimization Waste: may also be called "the tug of war of processes or departments". This type of waste happens when competing processes a) duplicate the work needed for the entire value chain or b) "compromise each other and degrade the final outcome" (Lareau, 2003, p. 29).
Scheduling Waste: energy spent on compensating activities due to their poor scheduling. A well functioning Office Kaizen would schedule activities respecting their flow, timing, gaps, overlaps, and breathing in between them.
Work-around Waste: the famous informal, out-of-control, and DIY (Do It Yourself) type of procedure that overweighs the formal procedures the organization has in place. Normally the outcome of such procedures are penalties and more control, but in an Office Kaizen mentality, the group involved would look for best practices, share them, and make them the official way of doing things, while at the same time always looking for improvement opportunities.
Uneven Flow Waste: resources allocated to correct the uneven flow of material or information "sitting" somewhere in the process (similar to inventory waste). Just as in a manufacturing setting, the work group in an Office Kaizen would evaluate the value chain and focus on bottlenecks that may be piling up unnecessary materials or information.
Checking Waste: efforts put into the constant inspection of activities due to the poorly designed value stream. Checking, double-checking, and triple-checking are non-paying activities in the eyes (and pockets) of the customer. As in any continuous improvement (CI) approach, the design of the process should aim for an error-free outcome, as once put by Phillip Crosby.
Error Waste: the efforts spent on re-doing, fixing, and amending what has not been done properly in the first place. Although a certain degree of error is expected in all processes, the CI professional in an Office Kaizen environment should always set up the process with enough error-proofing (poka yoke) techniques and methods to secure the correct outcome as much as possible.
The next post will address Information Waste. eZsigma Group offers onsite analysis of processes and their constraints. For a more in-depth discussion on what your organization needs to become a better one, please contact us directly at rperdigao@ezsigmagroup.com.
Reference: Lareau, W. (2003). Transforming Office Operations Into A Strategic Competitive Advantage. Milwaukee, USA: ASQ Quality Press.
No comments:
Post a Comment