As professional office organizers and 5S Experts, we are constantly looking for ways to create visual management systems and workplace flow within our client’s offices.

I can think of no better example of Lean Daily Management than the one and only Julia Child’s famous kitchen. Though she was certainly not a manufacturer, Julia had a very special and intimate knowledge of her own workspace, along with her needs for uninterrupted and focused workflow.

According to Tom Fabrizio, understanding the waste of inspection “begins with an understanding that defects are caused by the way work is performed. If work is performed correctly, inspections are not needed” (Fabrizio, 7). As he describes it, inspections occur in order to find mistakes and defects after they have already occurred – they discover waste.

It is a little known truth that everything we own and which takes up space costs us money. This is true at home and in the office. When each square foot of office space is being paid for, that space is valuable and costs money to manage.

Time spent waiting for equipment that is slow or inefficient is considered waste. An example of this would be a machine breaking down or requiring constant maintenance. Five minutes every week could save you hours!

Though we want to do our best to please the client, sometimes the product of our efforts is just wasted energy, time and money; the client did not ask for it and does not want to pay for it. Read about the deadly waste of overprocessing.

This form of waste relates to any movement that is excessive or unnecessary. It can be as small as turning around to reach for a tool or a file, or as extreme as walking from one end of the building to another (multiple times in a day) in order to deliver a document that could be sent electronically.

The deadly waste of waiting irks us all at one time or another; waiting to see your doctor, waiting in line at the supermarket and waiting for your number at the DMV are all everyday forms of this waste. But what about wait time in the office? Read more here.

This is the first blog in a series about The Seven Deadly Wastes. Professional Organizer Veronica Bishop takes a close look at the first “Deadly” known as Correction and Rework. What time and material do you waste correcting and re-doing work? Read more here.

As 5S and Lean Office practitioners, one of the first questions we get asked is: “so what is 5S really all about?” People sometimes know the benefits of 5S, or they know the Five S’s themselves (Sort, Set in Order, Shine, Standardize, and Sustain). But the real backbone of the work often alludes people. What [Read more…]