Lean Administration – the underestimated management approach

Studies on how much waste can be found in German offices appear at regular intervals. In addition to the  Fraunhofer Lean Office study, another survey among 110 medium-sized companies comes to the conclusion that  employees spend more than 40 percent of their working hours on non-value-adding tasks  http://www.techtag.de/business/studie-fuehrungskraefte-verschTWenden-wertweede-fonds/

When you hear these numbers, you cannot help but wonder what is stopping companies from adopting lean management. Companies that also apply lean management in the indirect areas are proven to be very successful. Here are a few examples of success from practice:

Mechanical and plant engineering: Shortening of order processing (delivery times) by 30%; Reduction of the workload of the engineering when preparing the offer by 45%

Supplier industry: Decrease in quality problems, rework and complaints by 45%

Network operator/telecommunications: 12 months delivery time instead of 24 months

Hospitals: Reduction of administration effort per patient by 35%

The list goes on endlessly. Why is this potential not being leveraged, although the lean idea has become much more well-known? Possible reasons for this could be:

1. The term “lean” sometimes has negative connotations and is not associated with improving value creation, but with reducing staff. Of course, the amount of work is reduced if unnecessary things are eliminated. But lean management is not a reorganization or restructuring program, but the focus is on empowering employees to improve their processes themselves and reduce waste in their daily tasks. Normally, it also motivates the employees if they can spend more time on meaningful activities.
2. Lean management is not a short-term project, after which you can go back to business as usual. In order to be able to achieve success, a holistic approach and long-term planning are necessary. Building a lean culture does not happen overnight, but requires patience and sometimes a high ‘frustration tolerance’.
3. Lean is actually change management – and everyone knows how difficult that can be.

In order to successfully implement a change, it is not enough to introduce new methods and techniques, but the change processes must be organized and controlled. It’s not called change ‘management’ for nothing, and the effort required for this is often massively underestimated.

It is to be hoped that more companies will take the path of lean management in the future and not only in times of crisis. In the long term, German companies will hardly be able to afford the high proportion of work that does not add value.