You are probably familiar with the term ‘Lean’. These days, it’s become a popular term for improvement in today’s corporate culture.
The creation of the ideas within Lean are generally credited to Toyota and made famous in the book “The Machine that Changed the World”. However, Lean as a concept has moved out of Manufacturing and is used in all industries and all environments in an effort to reduce waste and improve quality.
At Lean Consulting, we specialise in delivering improvements and automation in service-based organisations. We can help you improve your processes and performance using Lean. It doesn’t matter if you are a Bank, a Water Utility, a Telco, a Council or a Supermarket – we can help you.
Lean is not Magic
Lean is not a magic wand that will magically make everything better. However, ‘Lean’ is a way to reduce waste, failure demand and non value adding activities using an approach that revolves around creating value for your customers. The Lean approach centres around 5 categories:
We’ve always done it that way
One of the most dangerous sentences in business – yet one we hear most often. When we ask someone why they complete a process a certain way, the most common answer is “well, we’ve always done it this way”. Sometimes it takes someone from the outside to question the status quo. Often, we find colleagues don’t feel empowered to make changes to processes. “I’d love to change this but I can’t”. Sometimes those constraints are real, but sometimes they are just perceived. But the biggest barrier to improvement is usually time. We’re all so busy people simply don’t have the time available to think about the customer’s expectations and the process through which we’ll deliver it.
How do we work?
Lean Consulting colleagues spend time observing your key processes to determine if they are set up for maximum efficiency. We begin by understanding how you currently operate today. Our team will look at the variation in your processes. Then we’ll look at activities that are potentially wasteful using the 8 wastes. When work comes into a team, we’ll look at how that work that was generated and if it was the result of a failure elsewhere in the process. Finally, we understand what it is your customers want and how best to provide it to them.
Why do we need to improve processes?
Improvement isn’t a one-off activity. It’s something that needs to be constant. Technology is constantly changing. Customer expectations and experiences are constantly changing. Look at how smartphones have impacted the customer experience and expectation in as little as 10 years. I can’t remember the last time I checked my online banking on a computer – I use the app. We no longer do our grocery shopping on a Saturday morning – instead we use an app.