Value Stream Management for the Lean Office: Eight Steps to Planning, Mapping, & Sustaining Lean Improvements in Administrative Areas

by Don Tapping, Tom Shuker

Bring Lean Improvements to the Administrative Areas of Your Organization! Extending their eight-step process to the realization of a lean office, Tapping and Shuker use a customer service case studyto illustrate the effectiveness of the value stream storyboard.This popular volume provides organizations with a proven system for implementing lean principles in the office. In addition to providing a thorough overview of basic lean concepts, this book details methods for identifying the administrative activities in need of attention. To address these, it applies the eight-step process for removing waste and reorganizing workflow. Accompanying the book are downloadable resources containing a lean assessment tool, a storyboard template, charts, a team charter, and worksheets.

Along with this book you receive downloadable resources containing a lean assessment tool, a storyboard template, useful charts, a team charter, forms, reports, and worksheets!

Genres: Business

176 pages, Paperback

First published February 20, 2002

Reviews

[Bethany · Rating 3 out of 5]

I know a little bit about lean as specifically applied to administrative work. I have participated in three events at my company. We have generally followed similar methodology as described with some different tools. I learned about a handful of new tools in the book like kanban cards and how to level work. The example is a little outdated because if really focuses on paper movement, which is no longer an issue. Instead we waste time on hundreds of emails a day and no one else can see our inbox and monitor it. Even shared mailboxes don’t quite improve this. It is thorough enough to get you started, but I don’t think anyone could run a lean event successfully from this text on their own. The example helps for understand, but is outdated and it takes some imaginative leaps to apply to todays work environment.

[Steve Whiting · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent introduction to Value Stream management in a manufacturing setting - easy to read, covers a lot of ground and would provide a really good framework for training people who were preparing to apply lean to their processes.

I'd love to see a version of this book applied to services rather than manufacturing