A previous position gave me the chance to learn about Lean Manufacturing. I've learned a small useful bit of insight about how a company, team or operation can should operate to deliver value for its customers. The Lean philosophy is all about identifying and eliminating waste. One of the biggest challenges is for companies to first IDENTIFY the waste in their organization and processes. The biggest target is the shop floor, but all areas of the organization should be heeding this warning. This isn't just a shop-floor solution.

What Is Waste, Anyway?

Waste is something that the customer is not, or does not want to pay for. Waste can typically be categorized as either ‘necessary waste’ and ‘pure waste’. The necessary waste can involve processes that are required to get the order taken, the accounting processes done, the payroll completed, and the reports compiled. The customer doesn’t pay for any of that, but it’s got to be done. Certainly there are processes that can be improved within those necessary waste items that you find during a value-stream mapping exercise. The pure waste is the main focus of a Lean organization’s focus.

Seven Forms of Waste

Overproduction - making too much product before it has been ordered, or before you can invoice for it. Simple stuff. Only product when and until you need it. Don't batch your product. A solution often found for this form of waste is single-piece-flow. There are a myriad of reasons excuses generated for why a company/process/team cannot do single piece flow. The waste here is the wasted opportunity where you could have been building something else that could have been invoiced right away.

Overprocessing  - only work on a product as much as it needs or as much as the customer wants. Do not polish the underside of a car. Do not give that widget 10 coats of paint if it only requires 2.

Inventory - typically this refers to raw materials and finished product. Having too much input and too many outputs not being shipped. Both of these tie up cash that should otherwise be sitting in your bank account. Produce the product at the last responsible time. Ship & invoice as soon as you can. This is a fine balance that can have you juggling with many variables (ordering lead times with multiple vendors, shipping schedules, lumpy customer demand, external dependencies, weather, etc.

Transportation - moving raw materials, in-process goods, and finished goods doesn't add value to the customer. They aren't paying for those trucks, forklifts, conveyors, and people - you are! This includes handoffs and transfers.

Waiting - imagine the assembly line. This is again the lost-opportunity scenario. Someone on the shop floor waiting for raw materials or their 'input' is a classic example. This applies to customers and vendors as well. Waiting for vendors who don't support you in the Lean philosophy can cost you time and money. Those vendors should be encouraged to accelerate/step up, or be replaced. We all have customers to serve, and we should strive to meet their demands.

Rework/Defects – don’t make something that isn't what the customer ordered. A defect may be a problem in your product that deviates from the specs, or is actually a hidden flaw. The later in the process that the flaws are discovered, the more expensive it will be to fix. This is totally non-value added, and you don't get paid to fix those defects. Rework is just as wasteful: fixing a processing mistake from an upstream process usually costs more than finding and fixing the problem upstream. Software developers and I.T. workers know this intimately.

Motion - the movement of people. If a worker has to travel outside a 6-foot circle (or some other subjective 'reasonable' distance), they likely are spending too much time not working on the product and adding value. This happens also when an often-needed set of files are located across the building. Same would apply to a printer, stockpile of supplies, or other team members!

Got wind of a great idea. Some organizations are making an effort to reduce printing, print devices and printing costs. Please note, this isn’t my original idea, and IANAEA (I am not an Exchange admin). I am just being loud about it, perhaps you'll turn out to be a green hero where you work. This will work for any SMB or large organization.

Some organizations work like this: someone is assigned the fax machine, and part of their job is to take care of the incoming faxes. Holy hum-drum, Batman!

Lessen the burden on those fax-gathering-folk

• Acquire a fax machine that will transform an incoming fax to an email with an attachment (pdf, tif or whatever). Obviously the smaller filesize the better.
• Have that incoming fax document emailed to an account that only deals with email.
• Be nice though. Setup their email client with a new folder and rule so that emails from fax@mycompany.org go to only one folder.
• Perhaps have that account checked only X times a day to limit the interruptions to the human.
• They can then filter and send to the recipients.
• This is a human-powered time-consuming spam filtering mechanism as well. Just imagine all the restaurants, travel agents, and sundry fax spammers whose hopes and dreams are crushed by this system.
• Encourage the end-recipients not to print that fax.

Level Up

Now that you are saving paper, go the extra step. Save some human time. Let’s assume you are using Microsoft Exchange and Outlook. Any version will work.

• Create yourself a new Public Folder - one per fax line that you have. Do you have 'private' fax lines for the HR types, or director types? Lock it down with Active Directory permissions! Simple stuff!
• Modify the ‘to’ email address on the fax machine to send to that new Public Folder.
• Direct people to visit that Public Folder when they're expecting a fax.
• Build your own set of business rules around when to remove items from this Public Folder. i.e. If the fax is meant for you, and only you, then delete or move it to your personal Inbox as you will. Fwd to anyone concerned is also appropriate. Standard email rules apply here as well (etiquette, attachment size, etc).
• Have people add that Fax folder to their Favorites in Outlook Public Folders.

Write a nice how-to document for people on how to visit that Public Folder. How to Move/Copy to their inbox. Set the business rules here. Obviously management buy-in will be important.

"So What?! It's just a few pieces of paper!"

Well let's do the math. Here's my quick and dirty formula.

• 20 faxes per day.
• .0055 hours (20 seconds) to analyze a fax and determine who to redirect it to, and forward the email. (20 seconds /3600 seconds per hour = .0055 hours)
• $15 per hour for a human
• 10 cents per page printed. Assume that includes TCO items: paper, printer toner (galaxies more for ink), printer maintenance, amortized cost of the printer.

20 x (($15 x .0055) + $.10) = $3.65 per day

$3.65 x 255 work days per year = $930.75

My example company is spending $930 a year on receiving faxes. I know this number is dwarfed by the time-costs of email, but it's something to look at. I know the fax-hunter-gatherer would love to have that task melt away.