Timothy McLean delivered a keynote speech at AustCham Shanghai

Managing Director and Founder of TXM Lean Solutions, Tim McLean was invited to the “Lean Business” breakfast event at the Shanghai Crowne Plaza Hotel on November 10th, 2015, organized by AustCham Shanghai, to deliver a keynote speech regarding “Beyond the Factory Floor – Lean Thinking in the Office”.

At first, Tim McLean explained that costs are rising fast in China and office costs are a key driver of this phenomenon so improvement needs to be done even beyond the factory floor. Then he pointed out that we could find waste in accounting, engineering, sales, customer service, HR, IT, general administration, legal and quality. In order to eliminate wastes and reduce costs, companies need to apply lean management principles not only in the factory but also in the office and service. Tim illustrated the advantages of applying Lean in the Office with both Australian and Chinese case studies of TXM’s clients.

In conclusion, Tim shared the keys to successful office lean implementation.

• Start from the customers – Who are the customers? What do they need?
• Improvement can come from increasing value and decreasing waste.
• Ensure all key stakeholders are on board – at the beginning avoid too much organizational complexity or multiple locations.
• Office processes often have multiple value streams – do not over-simplify.
• Establish simple understandable metrics.
• Use 5S to drive standardisation and to see problems.

More than 20 executives attended this meeting. Post-event feedback suggests that most of the attendees were inspired to evaluate their processes in their offices and start to consider applying the lean techniques to stay competitive. After an engaging discussion with them, Tim gave two copies of his book “Grow Your Factory – Grow Your Profit: Lean for Small and Medium Sized Manufacturing Enterprises” away as a gift.

If you want to know more about lean office and service, please feel free to contact our TXM Lean consultants. If you want to learn more about lean events, please follow TXM’s Wechat (ID: txmchina). We will keep posting the latest lean activities for you.