Beyond the Lean Office: A Novel on Progressing from Lean Tools to Operational Excellence by Kevin J. Duggan

Author:Kevin J. Duggan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: CRC Press/Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
Published: 2015-05-16T16:00:00+00:00

Continuous Flow

“The next guideline is continuous flow,” said Jennifer. “We won’t be able to cover all the details of this one today, but there are plenty of books out there that can help fill in the gaps for you. We saw continuous flow once before during our signature exercise when we demonstrated how to see the flow of value. Because most people in the office are shared resources and divide their time among many different duties and responsibilities, full-time continuous flow isn’t really a viable option. But, we can have part-time continuous flow, where the associates involved all have the same amount of work to do, perform to a takt time, and operate in process one, move one fashion.

“Let’s think back to the exercise we did. What’s it like in our offices now, when we don’t have continuous flow?”

“Work piles up everywhere,” I said. “And not just at the end of the line like it did in the signature exercise. All those in-baskets on everyone’s desks or e-mail inboxes are filled to the brim with work that needs to get done.”

“Good,” replied Jennifer. “What happens to the work while it sits in between everyone? Just to be clear, even though the in-baskets sit on people’s desks, no single associate has ownership of the work in them. The work is in limbo. At that point, it doesn’t belong to the person who put it there any more or less than it does to the person who will eventually take it. So, let me ask you this: What happens or can happen to work while it’s waiting to be processed?”

“Well, it can be sorted and shuffled,” I offered. “Priorities might change. Sometimes, the work requires a more in-depth review because it’s gone cold sitting for so long. Or, a customer’s needs have changed, and we don’t know it.”

“All good responses, Pat, but I’ll answer my own question to drive home the point,” said Jennifer. “What can happen to work while it sits in an in-basket or e-mail inbox? Only two things can happen: anything and everything. This uncontrolled flow is subject to everything you mentioned and more. I think we’d all agree it does us no good for work to sit around waiting like this. Going forward, we’re going to try to prevent this from happening, and continuous flow is how we’re going to do it.”

“OK,” I said. “But how are we supposed to do this without getting rid of individual in-baskets or e-mail inboxes and combining them all? Not to mention, because each associate is a shared resource whose activities take different amounts of time to complete, they’d all be waiting around for one another to finish their work. Surely, we don’t want to do that!”

“Let me reply to your two concerns,” said Jennifer. “One is shared resources, and the other is different or varying task times. First, regarding shared resources, because people work on many different things throughout the day, full-time continuous flow usually isn’t an option, so we use part-time continuous flow instead.

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