Lean - Kaizen Blitz in service industries (financial sector)
Has anyone had experience of carrying out and implementing Kaizen Blitz in a service based office environment? What sucess have you had and do you have any expamples of what you did and the results?
This is something I am really interested in implementing alongside our current six sigma programme but am unsure as to how they can work cohesively together without taking the focus off the other.
Kaizen Blitz in a Service Environment
Submitted by Kevin Lehigh (not verified) on 16 March, 2008 - 19:38.
I took your question to be more about the benefits of Kaizen Blitz or lean initiatives for any company. The results can be staggering like Adam states for immature companies and I have years of experience seeing similar results for processes that are not well defined or ad hoc. For companies or divisions where processes have been worked on significantly and metrics are in place (divisions with CMMI L3, ISO 9001:2000 or AS9100 certifications or equivalent) the results are less on a % basis. For software development processes at Raytheon (CMMI L3) savings were more on the order of 25% (net reduction in hours due to more bugs in phase and spending less time fixing them) from build to build using critical chain program management and enhancing peer review and consolidating test protocols.
Re:
Hi Ash,
Results can be huge in the office environment. Here is a copy of the results from one event - we took a process from 42 days down to 13 minutes - generated about $0.5m of benefit and was implemented during the week. Please excuse the format - I couldn't find a way to space it out in table format
Before (b) After (A) % Change (%)
Number of Steps 33 (B) 8 (A) 76% (%)
Number of Hand-Offs 5 (B) 1 (A) 80% (%)
Time Delays 5 (B) 1 (A) 80% (%)
Number of VA Steps 2 (B) 2 (A) 0% (%)
Number of NVA Steps 31 (B) 6 (A) 81% (%)
Cycle Time (minutes) 30 (B) 13 (A) 57% (%)
Lead Time (days) 42 (B) 1 (A) 98% (%)
Distance (feet) 462 (B) 0 (A) ~ (%)
If you want further details - don't hesitate to e-mail.
Regards,
Adam AdamLBowden@Yahoo.com