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Practising what we preach
23/10/2009
There have been several changes made at Head Office
since my last entry.
To encourage the admin staff to assist in planning their
own workloads and as a way of helping them determine
priorities, I sit down with Nicole and Shayne at the
start of each day. These one on one meetings only last
for 10 minutes or so and the guys bring yesterday's and
today's timesheets.
Together we go through their list of yesterday's tasks
and determine what got done and what didn't. We then put
the tasks not finished on top of today's list. We then
plan out what other tasks need to be done today.
This is useful for me because I can then allocate each
of them tasks because I have a good understanding of
what time they have available during the day.
The three of us gather together at 3.15pm each afternoon
and we go through what we've accomplished, what other
work has come in and solve any issues have come up
during each day. For example, yesterday Shayne had been
trying to mail merge labels and it was not working for
him. He mentioned this at our afternoon meeting so when
we were finished, we sat down together and worked
through the process.
25/09/2009
Recently we were introduced to 30/30 Kaizen events and I
must admit when Bob scheduled the first one I was a
little nervous, not having a clue what this was.
I
think we were all a little skeptical when Bob
explained that we would be looking at the front office
area and compactus for 30 improvement ideas in 30
minutes. We split up into 2 teams of 2 and between the
four of us came up with 60 ideas in 30 minutes. We then
spent the next 30 minutes actioning some of them.
It took us 2-3 weeks to action them all and we have
since held another 30/30 Kaizen even with me as the
event leader. This time it took 20 minutes for the 3 of
us to find the 30 items with an even split on the number
of improvement ideas from each person. To ensure all of
the items on the list were implemented we spent half an
hour each day directly after our ball session and
together making the changes.
I
plan to hold more of these are they are great for
cleaning up a small office and are not intrusive in our
workload. I've found our waste is prominently time
related so cleaning our work areas and keeping them that
way means our time is spent more efficiently.
Our next events will have different event leaders with
Shayne and Nicole each taking their turn at leading.
26/08/2009
The past few months have seen us busily implementing
many Lean initiatives and 5Sing our office.
We regularly throw the ball around and everyone is used
to doing this now. It only takes 15 minutes so it's not
a big intrusion on anyone's day but it does give an
insight into each other's workload. This helps me
because during this session I can allocate specific
tasks to the guys and leave them to do their work.
Shayne and Nicole are also getting into the habit of
looking at the "admin team tasks" section of the
whiteboard when they come in so they pretty much know
what their day will be like.
It's been a busy couple of days and we've gotten through
a heap of work. It goes to show that when everyone works
together we accomplish twice as much and have much more
fun doing it. There's more to go and I'm sure that if
pushed we can move up another couple of gears.
KIM LITTLE
Head Office
Manager
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