Lean Case Study - The Planned Office

SECTOR: Financial Services

This office was responsible for performing a time critical task. Work arrived before staff arrived at work but had to be completed on the day it arrived and sent out. Staff could not go home until the work for the day was complete.

Being a good employer, staff had many opportunities to vary their working hours. They could change daily working hours, work specific days in the week and change working hours to look after children.

When we analysed what work came in each day, we discovered the following profile of work

Obviously, Wednesday was a very busy day. More than twice the amount of work was done on Wednesdays compared to Mondays. Because the work had to be finished before anybody went home, there was an awful lot of overtime worked on Wednesdays.

When we looked how many hours were being worked on each day of the week. Guess which day staff avoided if they could? Yes, Wednesday and this meant that on the busiest day of the week, the fewest people came in to work. And when did we have most people in? That’s right, Monday when there was the least amount of work to do.

By explaining the situation to the team, we very quickly re-arranged people’s working patterns to better match the workload and for the first time in years, the team went home on time on Wednesdays.