Office Kaizen: Transforming Office Operations into a Strategic Competitive Advantage

William Lareau's "Office Kaizen - Transforming Office Operations into a Strategic Competitive Advantage" doesn't focus on the lean tools most books written on lean transformations focus on. Instead of rehashing the core lean concepts of process mapping, 5S, etc. which dozens of other books are dedicated to, it gives a very comprehensive explanation of how to create a lean culture through the restructuring of management teams to maximize the effectiveness of other lean tools, like visual controls and a daily accountability process. While most companies grasp the advantages of value stream mapping and kaizens and see quick improvements once they utilize these tools, the results they achieve typically don't last because they haven't put in place a management system to sustain those improvements, much less drive additional daily incremental improvements.I was particularly drawn to Mr. Lareau's approach because it was very similar to one of the best lean books I've ever read - "Creating a Lean Culture - Tools to Sustain Lean Conversions" by David Mann (if you haven't read this book yet - I strongly recommend it); hence the name of my review. It seems that Mr. Lareau has adopted Mr. Mann's theories on how to create a lean culture on the shop floor through the adoption of a new system of management to the office. He even expands on Mr. Mann's concepts by using his degrees in Clinical Psychology and Applied Psychology to explain in Chapter Five how to get human nature on your side when trying to create a lean culture. However, there are key concepts in Mr. Mann's book that Mr. Lareau doesn't include that I think are just as applicable in the office environment as they are on the factory floor. The most important is the concept of "Leader Standard Work", which are the tasks that the leaders at each layer of an organization do on a regular (typically daily) basis.While I highly recommend this book, I strongly suggest you read it in conjunction with Mr. Mann's book to get an even more comprehensive overview of how to create a management structure to support an organization's cultural transformation into a lean, learning enterprise.

This book should have been titled "Kaizen Office". The title and book description are somewhat misleading. The book is not about how to apply Kaizan techniques to the office environment to remove waste with actionable instructions and examples. The book is actually about how a company should be structured to achieve "continuous improvement". It begins with the installation of an Executive Steering Committee (ESC) that oversees and directs improvement efforts for the company. It further recommends individual action teams and work groups all of which are highly structured with regular meetings, metrics, and charters. Each workgroup is instructed to have a visual control board where the group meets daily to discuss the metrics, KCG 20 keys, and improvement suggestions. The focus of the metrics and improvement suggestions for the group are only those which the group can control, everything else flows up to the ESC who can assign an improvement team to work on the effort. Overseeing the whole process is a Mentor, who is essentially the Continual Improvement Manager who understands, applies, and trains on the tools of continual improvement.We already have "roughly" this sort of structure, so there was nothing new there.The book does go into some detail on various forms of waste including Leadership waste, which was interesting. The KCG 20 keys were also rather interesting. It consists of 20 different keys that measure items such as: Documentation Management, Time Management, Workplace Arrangement, Problem Solving, & Priority Management for each workgroup. Each has a 1-5 point value where 1 is the usual mess, 4 is world class, and 5 is currently invincible. The last thing I found to be useful was the level of responsibility that the ESC has and the expectations placed on them. These expectations include: Attend ESC meetings, "patrol" the work group visual control boards, champion/coach improvement teams, be responsible for a KCG 20 keys site score, coach workgroups on their boards & daily meetings, and maintain & coach workgroups on the improvement suggestion program. Most important the individuals on the ESC are measured on how well/often they perform these actions.

I really enjoyed this book's approach to describing the wastes. Instead of going through the standard 7 wastes, he splits them out into extremely office focused wastes and provides examples for each. Much improved over the typical lean book, and the examples are great to share with my practitioners without me needing to reinvent the wheel.Overall, the concepts in the book are sound: daily accountability meetings in departments, visual work boards in departments, manage by walking around, and a strong leadership team help to avoid the "oh, yay, another program" aspect of implementation in the office environment. If he'd solely focused on this, I would give this book 5 stars and put it up among the top two office lean/kaizen books out there (the other by Locher, Lean Officer and Service Simplified).What killed me was the constant sell of the Office Kaizen (tm) approach, including a whole bunch of copyrighted tools and approach vectors. Do I want to SLIM-IT? Use the LDMS? Use the KCG 20 Keys approach? I could certainly buy these tools from them, have them implement them for consulting fees, and be very annoyed and no better off. I thought I paid for the book for insight and direction - not as a sales brochure.

This book transformed the way I look at the office. Where others see business I see delay, frustration and inefficiency.

Disliked

Purtroppo per essere un libro sul kaizen office secondo me è troppo descrittivo / teorico e poco pratico , non lo consiglio per ch è alle prime armi con la lean.

Ce livre donne un grand nombre d'idées pour intégrer les principes lean dans le travail de bureau.Il met notamment en avant les principes de type 5S, le suivi des opérations, les réunions rapides, etc...Il donne de nombreux exemples et un certain nombre de formulaires tout faits qui se révèlent extrêmement pratiques...Vraiment un livre à lire...

as expected, fast delivery no problems