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Essay / Lean Implementation in an Organization
“The Toyota Way”, this term, emphasizes the idea of improving workflow without any irregularity or fluctuation, with consistent elimination of waste. This simply means that if you want to streamline your workflow, without having to give up productivity, you must optimize the workflow by minimizing waste and adapt to different situations that may arise. Given this, government agencies are increasingly aware of the need to implement Lean principles while rendering services to citizens. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay The idea of Lean government, although unlikely, finds its way into most government agencies. Author Chew Jian Chieh, in his article on Lean Government, put forward eight ideas that can bring about revolutionary changes in the way government processes take place. The main intention of Lean is to maintain a one-piece flow, that is, there should be a continuous and stable flow, without any disturbance. The eight viable Lean strategies outlined by Chew Jian Chieh are summarized below. Above all, for an organization to function, it must revolve all its processes around Takt time. Takt time is a Lean concept that describes the speed at which the production of goods must conform to customer demand. For example, consider that a government employee has to work 8 hours a day, including 1 hour lunch and tea break, and an additional hour for other miscellaneous work. This gives him a net time available for effective work of approximately 6 hours [8 – 1 – 1 = 6 hours (360 minutes)]. If he has to pass 360 bills per day, then he will have to pass 1 bill per minute. However, this is not possible because people or machines cannot guarantee 100% efficiency every time. There may be certain obstacles in the workflow that prevent it from being a one-piece process. Usually, government agencies do not follow the concept of Takt time. This results in an undulating pile of work for employees. Therefore, they might face problems in delivering the work on time to the clients. On this subject, the author highlights that to speed up processes or reduce unnecessary steps, government agencies should adopt Lean methodologies to improve efficiency. They must ensure that they use the concept of Takt time to improve processes. Second, for any processing step, in order to be synchronized with Takt time, it must have the correct duration. One of the challenges government agencies face is variations in customer demands. There is not always a constant flow. Ultimately, this may result in downtime for the agency, but on the other hand, if there is high customer demand, their service may be delayed, as the counter process is not in sync with the flow of incoming requests. So, if a proper record is kept, the required personnel can be made available to meet the requirements. Not only must staff be competent in their work, but they must also adapt to any given environment. Additionally, the layout of most government value streams is based on grouping a similar type of function in one place. They are categorized into different departments in such a way that only a specific type of function can be performed on that specific counter, after which one may have to travel some distance to accomplish the next function. With these configurations, itbecomes tedious to undertake a task. A lot of time is wasted waiting and in transportation. Lean methodologies imply that the structure should be such that all the departments are grouped or arranged one after the other in the form of cells, which will help the clients to perform all the necessary functions serially. There are therefore no stocks in progress. Besides no, there is also talk of batch jobs waiting for additional functions to be completed. This saves almost 50% of time and effort. Additionally, everyone must be equally competent and flexible for any given type of work so that the process runs smoothly. Normally, in government agencies, they think that once similar type of work is accumulated, they will start working on it. Government staff have to multitask, they also have to take care of a number of tasks, other than some overarching matters. Because they believe that once setup is done for a particular job, they can do all types of similar jobs in one go, which helps them to increase their personal efficiency. Even though it is not that simple to establish task cells in government agencies, there might be a workaround to manage all the processes on time. Additionally, every organization must follow the first in, first out policy. This generally means that top priority should be given to the work that arrives first. However, in government agencies this is not the case, as orders are delivered in in-tray form. The result is usually that whatever happens last is finished first. This therefore leads to disruptions in order processing times, which ultimately results in an overall delay in overall customer requirements. There should always be a pull system instead of a push system, to avoid delivery delays. Usually, it seems, one person ends up doing all the work. If a person is known for performing a given task efficiently, they are often tasked with that type of work. This creates an imbalance in the work assigned to them. Therefore, for an organization to maintain a constant balance of work culture, it must adapt work standardization methodologies and ensure that the load is distributed equally. Likewise, to be free of any pending work, it is better to complete it. work the same day. Government officials believe that the work assigned to them cannot be completed on the same day. This is why they find themselves so late. Consider that civil servants must complete 200 missions per day. Of which only 50 are completed on the same day. The next day, they receive 200 assignments again and only 50 are completed. So the 150 missions each day pile up and are never completed. For this, value chains must be designed in such a way that the work is carried out the same day it is received. Finally, the author rightly says that in any government agency, a value chain map must be followed. Value stream mapping basically means taking note of the current situation and accordingly planning future events of delivering the product or service, with a view to eliminating Lean wastage from the current scenario. When carrying out value chain mapping, government officials are then aware of their tasks, just as they also know the overall time wasted in non-productive stages, inventory in progress that has.