We have developed Teams in our Customer Service Department for developing level loading of work and a work cell concept. I need tips on how to make our cell a cohesive team, ie working together and handling other customers. This is for an aerospace company. Any help you can give us or materials you can recommend would be appreciated. Lean office is a new area and most material is for manufacturing environment.

-- Judy Anne Pratt (JudyAPratt@Eaton.com), December 08, 2000

Answers

Judy -

We are also searching for valuable training in creating a "Lean Office"....not much out there, is there? There are a couple books out there by Jim Thompson....Lean Production for the office...Common Sense Ideas to Help Your Office Continuously Improve (2000) and an earlier book by him....just simply The Lean Office(1997). Hope this helps you!

-- Debra L Oliver (dloliver@collins.rockwell.com), April 19, 2001.

We have just developed a Lean Office workshop that includes both classroom instruction and a simulated office. In the classroom instruction, the participant learns about the lean techniques and how they might be used in an office or administrative environment. In the simulated office, participants take the roles of office personnel working in the sales and estimating departments. During these exercises, the techniques of lean are demonstrated. We have written 2 papers on lean office: one is in the Institute of Industrial Engineers proceedings of the 2001 Industrial Engineering Research Conference, the second is in an upcoming APICS conference.

-- Mary Johnson (mjohnson@uta.edu), July 09, 2001.

If you aren't already a memeber, you might consider joining the Office Lean e-mail discussion group. There aren't any magic bullets, just CPI / Lean practitioners sharing lessons learned. You can find the site at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Office_LEAN/

-- Gary Lister (gary.lister@robins.af.mil), January 22, 2003.

Also interesting is http://little_lean_lessons.blogspot.com/

-- Gary Lister (gary.lister@robins.af.mil), May 05, 2003.