Operational Excellence is achieved when all employees in your organization can see the flow of value to your customers and can make adjustments to that flow before it breaks down. Operational Excellence in Your Office: A Guide to Achieving Autonomous Value Stream Flow with Lean Techniques presents nine time-tested guidelines for designing business process flow that enable Operational Excellence in the office. Each chapter describes one guideline by using text, illustrations, and practical examples to provide a comprehensive understanding of why creating flow in the office is essential and how to achieve it.
Accounting for the reality that most office employees are required to work on many different projects throughout the day, this book details a step-by-step methodology for leveraging traditional value stream flow to establish Operational Excellence in an office environment. In addition, it describes a more advanced form of flow called "self-healing" flow—in which employees are capable of identifying and fixing problems with the flow without requiring management intervention.
Explaining how to achieve Operational Excellence and self-healing flow with the nine guidelines, the book also introduces new concepts such as part-time continuous flow processing cells, workflow cycles, takt capability, integration events, pitch in the office, and ways to tell whether your office is on time.
With this book, you will be able to take the knowledge provided and immediately apply it by following the step-by-step checklists included at the end of each chapter. In addition to the lists of action items for implementing each guideline, the book includes "acid tests" you can use to determine if you have implemented each guideline correctly.
When finished, you will have designed an end-to-end flow for the services in your office as well as visual systems to help employees distinguish normal flow from abnormal flow so they can fix flow problems on their own, before they negatively impact your customers.
Table of Contents:
Introduction -- About the Authors -- Acknowledgments -- How to Use This Book -- Part One: Getting Started -- Chapter One: Operational Excellence in the Office -- Chapter Two: The Key Function of Any Office -- Chapter Three: Value Stream Design for the Office -- Chapter Four: Determine Service Families -- Chapter Five: Create a Current State Value Stream Map for Each Service Family -- Part Two: Applying the Nine Guidelines for Office Flow -- Chapter 6: Guideline #1 Takt and Takt Capability -- Chapter 7: Guideline #2 Continuous Flow -- Chapter 8: Guideline #3 FIFO -- Chapter 9: Guideline #4 Workflow Cycles -- Chapter 10: Guideline #5 Integration Events -- Chapter 11: Guideline #6 Standard Work -- Chapter 12: Guideline #7 Single-Point Initialization -- Chapter 13: Guideline #8 Pitch -- Chapter 14: Guideline #9 Changes in Demand -- Chapter 15: Applying the Nine Guidelines: The Acid Test -- Part Three: Creating Operational Excellence.
About the Author :
Kevin J. Duggan has more than 30 years of experience applying advanced Lean techniques to achieve Operational Excellence. He is the author of three books on the subject: Design for Operational Excellence: A Breakthrough Strategy for Business Growth (McGraw-Hill, 2011), Creating Mixed Model Value Streams (Productivity Press, 2002), and The Office That Grows Your Business: Achieving Operational Excellence in Your Business Processes (The Institute for Operational Excellence, 2009).
A recognized authority on Operational Excellence, Duggan has contributed to publications such as Industry Week, Aviation Week, Food Engineering, Flow Control, Assembly, Lean Management Journal, and Plant Services, and has appeared on CNN and the Fox Business Network. He is a frequent keynote speaker, master of ceremonies, and panelist at both public and private conferences globally, and he also lectures graduate students in colleges throughout the United States.
In 1998, Duggan founded Duggan Associates (North Kingstown, Rhode Island), an international training and advisory firm that assists companies in applying advanced Lean techniques to their manufacturing and office operations through hands-on support and workshops. Since Duggan Associates’ inception, he has helped Fortune 50 corporations as well as small businesses with single site operations in the insurance, engineering development, financial services, aerospace, energy, and manufacturing industries.
In 2007, Duggan founded the Institute for Operational Excellence (also in North Kingstown), the leading educational center on Operational Excellence, which provides resources, such as workshops, online training, how-to articles, and books to a global community of members.
Review :
"Kevin’s definition and approach to achieving Operational Excellence in the office is profound, as it provides a true destination for office personnel (and managers!) improving the processes. It makes sense immediately. The five questions for flow in the office are empowering and drive office employees to create not just flow, but a self-healing, autonomous flow that does not require management intervention. Work every page of this book and watch your organization thrive and innovate in the office to achieve top line business growth. Along with Kevin’s other books, the best series of improvement documents available."
—Chuck Miles, Director, Materials Management, Logistics and Inventory, GoGo
"Operational Excellence is a complete change in philosophy. Lean and Six-Sigma are generally viewed as tool sets, and mostly applied in manufacturing/operations, whereas Operational Excellence is the establishment of a holistic operating system for the entire enterprise. Duggan and Healey’s guide to creating flow in the office makes this a powerful transformation, whether you’re a seasoned CI professional or an office manager seeking to create value for your customers."
—H. Scott Parkin, Director, Operational Excellence, United Technologies Aerospace Systems
"Operational Excellence in Your Office is a very practical guide for transforming office value streams to create flow and provide value stream resources with the visual controls necessary to quickly assess the health of value flow and immediately correct any anomalies. Utilizing the nine guidelines effectively will provide the structure for improving office value streams and processes, creating Operational Excellence throughout the organization."
—Stephen M. Moore, Vice President, Lean Enterprise & Quality, Parker Hannifin Corporation
"This book is a great complement to Creating Mixed Model Value Streams and should be well-received by the many people who have found it a challenge to apply lean concepts in an office environment. Operational Excellence in Your Office provides practical approaches to understanding and managing service value streams while addressing the real world complexity of high-mix service environments. The book presents Operational Excellence concepts in an office setting in a straightforward and non-technical way. The examples will resonate with those familiar with Operational Excellence concepts as well as those considering them for the first time."
—Gerry McCool, Senior Director, Lean Six Sigma, Jabil
"Achieving Operational Excellence in an office environment can be challenging, but Duggan and Healey have developed a robust process that visually shows when office flow becomes abnormal and corrects it autonomously, resulting in self-healing flow throughout the organization. Creating standard work to correct abnormal flow is ingenious and eliminates e-mails, meetings, phone calls, and everyday firefighting, allowing you to focus on the needs of the customer."
—Mark Vidic, Aftermarket Cost Reduction Manager, Caterpillar, Inc.
"Kevin Duggan’s new book, Operational Excellence for the Office, challenges the widely-held belief that only traditional manufacturing environments – and not offices – realize significant benefits from applying the principles of Operational Excellence. In the book, Kevin shows that office processes are not "different" and provides detailed, step-by-step instructions on how to effectively apply Operational Excellence principles to dramatically improve office flow and successfully operate a business in today’s globally competitive environment. The significant advantages to production environments have been well demonstrated – now Kevin shows how offices can realize the same gains."
—Jeffrey M. Corbin, Operations Manager, Laitram Machinery
"Kevin’s definition and approach to achieving Operational Excellence in the office is profound, as it provides a true destination for office personnel (and managers!) improving the processes. It makes sense immediately. The five questions for flow in the office are empowering and drive office employees to create not just flow, but a self-healing, autonomous flow that does not require management intervention. Work every page of this book and watch your organization thrive and innovate in the office to achieve top line business growth. Along with Kevin’s other books, the best series of improvement documents available."
—Chuck Miles, Director, Materials Management, Logistics and Inventory, GoGo
"Operational Excellence is a complete change in philosophy. Lean and Six-Sigma are generally viewed as tool sets, and mostly applied in manufacturing/operations, whereas Operational Excellence is the establishment of a holistic operating system for the entire enterprise. Duggan and Healey’s guide to creating flow in the office makes this a powerful transformation, whether you’re a seasoned CI professional or an office manager seeking to create value for your customers."
—H. Scott Parkin, Director, Operational Excellence, United Technologies Aerospace Systems
"Operational Excellence in Your Office is a very practical guide for transforming office value streams to create flow and provide value stream resources with the visual controls necessary to quickly assess the health of value flow and immediately correct any anomalies. Utilizing the nine guidelines effectively will provide the structure for improving office value streams and processes, creating Operational Excellence throughout the organization."
—Stephen M. Moore, Vice President, Lean Enterprise & Quality, Parker Hannifin Corporation
"This book is a great complement to Creating Mixed Model Value Streams and should be well-received by the many people who have found it a challenge to apply lean concepts in an office environment. Operational Excellence in Your Office provides practical approaches to understanding and managing service value streams while addressing the real world complexity of high-mix service environments. The book presents Operational Excellence concepts in an office setting in a straightforward and non-technical way. The examples will resonate with those familiar with Operational Excellence concepts as well as those considering them for the first time."
—Gerry McCool, Senior Director, Lean Six Sigma, Jabil
"Achieving Operational Excellence in an office environment can be challenging, but Duggan and Healey have developed a robust process that visually shows when office flow becomes abnormal and corrects it autonomously, resulting in self-healing flow throughout the organization. Creating standard work to correct abnormal flow is ingenious and eliminates e-mails, meetings, phone calls, and everyday firefighting, allowing you to focus on the needs of the customer."
—Mark Vidic, Aftermarket Cost Reduction Manager, Caterpillar, Inc.
"Kevin Duggan’s new book, Operational Excellence for the Office, challenges the widely-held belief that only traditional manufacturing environments – and not offices – realize significant benefits from applying the principles of Operational Excellence. In the book, Kevin shows that office processes are not "different" and provides detailed, step-by-step instructions on how to effectively apply Operational Excellence principles to dramatically improve office flow and successfully operate a business in today’s globally competitive environment. The significant advantages to production environments have been well demonstrated – now Kevin shows how offices can realize the same gains."
—Jeffrey M. Corbin, Operations Manager, Laitram Machinery
