Implementing lean office: a successful case in public sector

Abstract

Applying lean approaches in office areas can lead to performance improvements and other benefits as achieved in traditional manufacturing environments. The intangibility of office operations may appear as a major difficulty for lean implementations but in fact the benefits achievable are as important as the ones achieved in manufacturing environments. This paper reports a successful case of lean office implementation in a public sector organization giving emphasis to its major performance improvements. Lead times were greatly reduced to the most important office processes as well as achieving good improvements in productivity. Starting the lean office implementation with process mapping was very effective in creating rapid results and as a consequence more motivation and involvement of everyone. On the other hand, a good side effect achieved from this lean office case was the generation of a common culture among all teams and also a much easier integration between all different teams.