A few years back, I had the pleasure of taking my teenage daughters, Katie & Eleanor, to Las Vegas.
We'd hoped to see the great magician, David Copperfield, who I'd seen make tigers, elephants and the like disappear. On TV I saw David make the Statue of Liberty disappear.
Sadly, he was out of town & we had to settle for Cher...
Anyhow, somehow I made the following connection. (Must have been the desert air...)
Lean's next frontier is the office -- sales, marketing, engineering, design, planning & scheduling, finance and so on.
Deploying the "profound system of knowledge" here requires us to perform reverse magic.
David Copperfield makes visible things, invisible.
We have to do the opposite & make the invisible, visible.
Office work, is what Peter Drucker called "knowledge" work - most of it is hidden in the box knows as a computer.
Our job is to take it out that box and put it up on the wall, where everyone can see it.
Otherwise, waste multiplies exponentially, and our office processes become our constraint.
Here's a challenge for you:
- Review total lead time for your top three value streams,
- Where is most of the delay -- in operations (factory, hospital ward, laboratory etc) or outside operations?
If you're like many organizations, most of the delay in outside operations.
Yet where do we spend most of our improvement work?
So...let's work our magic and make the invisible, visible.
Best, Pascal
PS That's what The Remedy is all about.
In case you missed our last few blogs... please feel free to have another look…
The Beauty of Making Things
What is Breakthrough?, Part 2
What Does Breakthrough Mean? - Part 1
Suggestion boxes vs Quick & Easy Kaizen
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