Office Kaizen: Transforming Office Operations into a Strategic Competitive Advantage |
|
|
|
| Title: | Office Kaizen: Transforming Office Operations into a Strategic Competitive Advantage |
| Author: | William Lareau |
| Publisher: | ASQ Quality Press |
| Type: | Book / Paperback |
| Publication Date: | July, 2002 |
| ISBN / ISBN-13: | 0873895568 / 9780873895569 |
| List Price: | $52.00 |
| You Save: | $19.24 |
| Amazon Price: | $32.76 |
|
This book is also available, brand-new, from 3rd-party marketplace sellers at Amazon.com, from $31.00.
|
The HTML code below can be pasted onto your web-site, your MySpace page, or blog - or any number of similar places - to create a link to this page:
If, instead of a text link, you'd like to create a link to this page which will display the book cover, if it's available, then the code below will do exactly that:
Check for the same book at these other US book sites:
• [ Abebooks ]
• [ Alibris ]
• [ Barnes & Noble ]
• [ Half.com ]
• [ Powells ]
… or check UK bookstores
|
Editorial Review / Publisher's Information:
Product Description
Many business functions have been significantly improved through the use of a variety of quality techniques, but for the most part office and administrative functions have not kept pace. Most companies find it difficult to reduce costs in the office without noticeable sacrifices in performance. Some progressive companies are seeing improvements in their office environments through the use of Office Kaizen™, which emphasizes making continuous improvements over the long haul. Office Kaizen: Transforming Office Operations Into a Strategic Competitive Advantage presents a unified, consistent approach that enables businesses to establish a strategic competitive advantage by significantly improving the efficiency, quality and productivity of their office and administrative processes.
|
Other Items You May Enjoy:
Browse Books From These Related Subjects:
Customer Reviews:
• Excellent Practical Step By Step Guide, With Clear, Real World Applicability
27 May, 2008
A wonderful, practical guide for any organization to lean and apply the principles and practices of lean, not just to implement the methodologies but also to sustain and enable continuous improvement. This book is well written, and can be used as a guide and teaching book by consultants, or within an organization as well, with the only caveat being that you have to follow the recomendations and methods that are provided. With today's competitive environment, this book provides a simple, easy to follow guide on how to take advantage of your workforce's knowledge and experience, get them to buy into implementing and sustaining improvements in your business, and get everyone on board in steering the company to competitive advantage. Nice work, Dr. Bill!!
- Amazon Customer Review
• Office Kaizen Or Kaizen Office
29 August, 2009
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.
- Amazon Customer Review
• Read It And Just Do It
11 January, 2009
I enjoyed reading this, practical advice, not pretentious, not trying to change the world just trying to improve the work in the administration area. I like the concept of leadership waste, lots of practical advice. Read it and just do it, you don't need to ask your managers permission. I recommend this on all office change programs.
- Amazon Customer Review
• Creating A Lean "office" Culture
27 April, 2008
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.
- Amazon Customer Review
• Good Resource
18 May, 2009
Guides you through implementation of Lean in an office enviroment. specifically addresses issues unique to office environment.
- Amazon Customer Review
|
