Lean Beyond the Shop Floor

on May 17, 2016

I recently had the privilege of moderating a discussion on Lean Beyond the Shop Floor at the May Kansas City Manufacturing Network meeting.  The panel consisted of 3 people from Hallmark Cards and 1 from S.O.R. who have experience learning and implementing Lean in their respective areas.  And, oh, by the way, their respective areas are I/T, HR and Corporate Services.  Not the types of areas one would typically associate with Lean efforts.  However, the panelists, who are not Lean practitioners, all learned, implemented and are now benefitting from a Lean approach in their non-operational areas.  Each panelist shared their motivation behind implementing Lean in their workplace.  Reasons varied from reduced headcount, structuring problem solving and space constraints.  A few highlights below –

  • Lean For I/T – finding a better way to handle field service calls regarding retails technology performance issues
  • Lean for HR – project work involved determining a better process of providing desired menu items in company run cafeteria
  • Lean for Corporate Services – corporate archive storage was space constrained as well as challenges in organization.

In addition, I am currently working with a local area city government.  I am assisting their efforts to improve the construction permit process using common Lean techniques such as Value Stream Mapping.

Results varied from more satisfied customers, less helpline calls, more revenue by increasing capacity, and taking on other storage items as well as other services.  All these directly impact both top line and bottom line numbers. 

The motivation, approach, implementation, challenges as well as results directly mirror the process when implementing Lean in a traditional operational setting.  I am sure there are opportunities Beyond the Shop Floor in your organization as well.  Given the examples shown here, why wait to implement Lean to raise top line revenue and increase margins?  Give me a call and we can discuss your operation.