Lean Manufacturing has a long and very rich history, having started with Toyota in the early 1950's and really taking off in the rest of the world from about 1990 to present. Lean in non-manufacturing areas, particularly in the office, has a less visible history and has only recently (last 5-10 years) been coming up in applications. Businesses, however, recognize there is potential in using lean principals to drive out waste in their office and administrative functions as well.
A 5-day Lean Office Kaizen focused on Engineering addressed in major improvements to several engineering processes:
1. Design
2. Drawing Quality
3. Schedule & Timeline
4. Training & Development
5. Package Release
6. Workstation Design
7. Organization
Business problems addressed in this kaizen were:
a) Drawings were late to the shop
b) Parts were late to the customer
c) Jobs were being overcharged by engineers
d) It was difficult to find where a job was in engineering
e) Drawing mistakes caused parts to be make wrong
f) Engineers were often interrupted, causing delays in getting their work done
These changes were made during the kaizen itself:
1) A One-Stop Shop for Engineering questions was set up,
2) An ideal engineering workstation was designed and a prototype built,
3) A visible schedule board (magnetic with racecars depicting percent complete on each project) was put in place,
4) 5S Workplace Organization was used to clear out the clutter and put necessary items in order so they could be more easily found, used, and replaced,
5) A Load Chart was created to more evenly balance individual engineer workloads, and
6) An Engineering conference room was designed and built featuring modern equipment (a Smart Board) and modern furniture.
These rapid kaizen-type improvements resulted in much more effective engineering, as well as a greatly improved quality of worklife for the engineers.