Lean Case Study - The Improving Office

SECTOR: Government

This office takes 10 days to process a payment. After each stage the documents are carefully filed away in a cabinet, and then taken out later for further work. What types of waste are here?

• Conveyance - the documents are carried to and from the cabinets
• Inventory - there is a lot of work in the office, about 10 days worth
• Motion - people walked to and from the cabinets

The staff re-designed the office layout in order to reduce or eliminate these wastes. Now as the document completed each stage it passed straight on to the next stage until completion.

What is the reduction in waste?

• Conveyance – reduced from nearly 100m to 2 or 3 m
• Inventory - reduced from about 10 days to less than one day
• Motion - virtually eliminated

And the effect on quality delivery and cost?

Well, stopping all that walking around meant staff spent more time processing the documents, doing useful work. Reducing the inventory meant that work is now completed on the day of receipt, not 10 days later. And because people now worked together, quality problems were noticed and resolved much more quickly.

This team are now doing more than twice the work they did before reducing waste. They are doing it in 1 day, not 10 and external quality problems have almost disappeared.