Mikkel Eriksen

Understand what creates value for customers

Considering the administration and service sector from a lean perspective means realizing and acknowledging that the sector’s tasks encompass production, and, as such, that industrial production can inspire their management.

Intrinsically understanding tasks is the key to establishing the right organization: which tasks are uniform, which are different, how can they be grouped, what can be kept separate? Once a pattern has been established, the correct structure can be set up.

Two key planning and control tools are:
• A capacity plan – a general plan showing the relationship between the future incoming volume of work and the department’s available staff resources. The capacity plan reveals capacity shortages or surpluses in the department. As a rolling plan, it continuously projects the historic task flow and compares it with current staff capacity, taking into account such factors as holiday, training courses and absences. The capacity plan can be drafted at the overall departmental level or right down to task type, if necessary.
• A staffing plan – a detailed plan that ensures a satisfactory service level for telephone calls, emails or personal enquiries. Staffing rotas are the operational manifestation of the capacity plan – a schedule for each individual staff member. The staffing plan takes into consideration such factors as capacity fluctuations in the course of the day.

Visibility must be embedded in the physical environment, concrete processes, goals, results follow-up and improvement initiatives.

By concentrating on visibility, employees can be turned into proactive team players who unaided can steer the company back on course towards its concrete targets.

Creating visibility means focusing on:
1. Establishing visible, logical processes.
2. Clarifying goals and results.

Physical work processes that are visible and logical give employees good working conditions. Process visibility promotes understanding, quality awareness and a sense of the broad picture.

goals and results must be made visible, partly to maintain organizational focus on the operating targets and partly to direct focus towards areas slated for improvement.

The job of collecting data and updating the boards can be very usefully delegated to employees. After six months to a year of systematically following up and illustrating results and data, the organization often becomes far more fact-oriented. Staff get used to making decisions and acting on the basis of concrete information rather than on gut feelings and assumptions