Product Description

Bring Lean Improvements to the Administrative Areas of Your Organization!

Extending their eight-step process to the realization of a lean office, Tapping and Shuker use a customer service case studyto illustrate the effectiveness of the value stream storyboard.This popular volume provides organizations with a proven system for implementing lean principles in the office. In addition to providing a thorough overview of basic lean concepts, this book details methods for identifying the administrative activities in need of attention. To address these, it applies the eight-step process for removing waste and reorganizing workflow. Accompanying the book is a CD containing a lean assessment tool, a storyboard template, charts, a team charter, and worksheets.

BONUS CD! Along with this book you receive a CD containing a lean assessment tool, a storyboard template, useful charts, a team charter, forms, reports, and worksheets!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #70272 in Books
• Published on: 2003-02-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 176 pages

Review
"We have been on our lean journey in manufacturing for some time now, and are expanding that success into our office environment and across administration for the entire company. We chose to begin with a requirement that all of our leaders create a value stream map for their area of responsibility and use the current state map to develop a future state map. With these maps in hand, they can "see" the gap that exists between the two and plan their "kaizen" improvement events in a rational manner. We purchased the "Value Stream Management for the Lean Office" workbook for all 900+ leaders as a resource tool. Too often, Maytag and other major companies throw out a requirement for leadership to do something, but do not provide a resource to accomplish it. These workbooks were our resource and added a significant value to our effort by eliminating the excuse for not knowing what a VS map is, how to create it or what value it delivers.These workbooks were an outstanding hit and I re-ordered several times to make sure everyone who needed one, received one!"
Mr. David Speer, Corporate Director, LeanSigma® Maytag Corporation 03/18/05

"Designed for managers at all levels, the book can aid those familiar with the principles of lean management as well as those who are complete novices."
Endorsement

"This book will probably be most useful for people who can see lean methods being used elsewhere, perhaps in their manufacturing plants. It would also be useful for those wanting to apply these principles to administrative processes in office environments".
Endorsement

About the Author
Don Tapping has worked for over twenty years to eliminate waste and improve bottom-line results in the telecommunications, medical, automotive, industrial, and aerospace industries. Tapping directed the lean implementation for Eaton Aerospace Division for over 5 years, with similar duties prior to that at Schlumberger Technologies, UNISTRUT Corporation, and Data Scan Services.

Tom Shuker has over thirty years’ experience in manufacturing and is currently President of Lean Concepts, LLC. Shuker recently participated in lean implementation within General Motors Corporation including two years at New United Motors Manufacturing, Inc. (NUMMI), a joint GM-Toyota Assembly Plant. He has also consulted for other manufacturers in the implementation of their lean manufacturing systems including Herman Miller, Autocam, Merilatt, Medtronics, Caterpillar, and Aeroquip Corporation–Division of Eaton.

Customer Reviews

An Easy to Understand Approach to Lean in the Office Environment
"Value Stream Management for the Lean Office" provides a clear and uncomplicated approach to implementing lean in an administrative environment. At $45 for 150 pages of text it is pricey, but is it worth it ? That, I think, depends on your need. On the plus side the book is very clearly written and lays out a step by step route to lean in the office. Mapping forms and charts to use are presented on the accompanying CD-ROM. It is a straightforward approach which might well suit a fairly small office environment with processes that are not too complicated. However, "simple" can easily become "simplistic" and the book does not adequately cover the issues pertaining in a large or complex environment, with lots of interaction between departments, people or activities. In addition the book provides very little background to lean and no discussion of the philosophy on which lean rests. Thus the book lists stages and actions without giving the reader an understanding of the reasoning or concepts behind lean.

If you have a straightforward office environment, perhaps in a small business, then this book should help you. If your needs are more complex, then you should probably look elsewhere.

Not recommended to get started with VSM for office operation
This book is really hard to be rated. Knowing already about JIT/Lean and especially about QRM-approach, I was looking for a book about value stream mapping and office operations to get started (beginner).

First of all, lets start to take a look what I found helpful about this book. The book provides good information about related issues as pitch, heijunka, selecting product-families for determining common processes (known to people with part grouping experiences etc.) and especially about the required project-management.

On the other side the book is weak about explaining the VSM technique itself. This is mainly related to the example chosen, which I found hard to understand and not very helpful. E.g. the key about data to be collected - to describe every process-step itself as L/T, processing time and many more - is only weak described. Without this, you might be able to draw your VSM, but the later good overview/ visualization and optimization opportunity is lost. This can be done much better!

Books as e.g. Complete Lean Enterprise do a much better job here and the example of a company used is much better to explain VSM for people working in industrial environment. Reading this book is easy and understandable - straight forward!

As a beginner in this area, I therefore stick to the book Complete Lean Enterprise and for some special issues, I sometimes use this book rated here. This book here looks a little bit like a summary of lots of important different points about VSM, but I'm personally in favore of books based on simple and realistic examples where text and figures can be simply followed. Without the additional and helpful information provided in this book, I would have given it a rating of 2 stars or even less..

Best Regards,
Oliver

Very good help to understand Lean
This is the kind of guide you need to get started together with professional help from outside your organization. As they say, there are no Lean experts, only more experienced people - it shows that Tom Shuker belongs to this category.