Eliminating waste, creating a culture of continuous improvement

When you’re busy running your business and focused on getting through the work, it’s easy to get caught in a trap of doing what you’ve always done - so waste and inefficiency can pile up quickly. When one of our clients was looking for ways to improve profitability and the efficiency of their chargeable staff, we introduced them to a framework to help them identify waste across the entire business, brainstorm improvement opportunities, and prioritise / implement a actions that would reduce costs across the business.

The details:

Project name: 8 Wastes of Lean Workshop & Solution Implementation Support

Now: Coming out of Covid lockdowns when a number of staff had been made redundant, our client was experiencing a period of renewed growth and had recently hired a number of new team members. They were at a point in their growth phase where they needed to improve efficiency and recoverability of chargeable team members to improve the profit of the business. The directors / owners recognised that there were probably a number of areas they could implement improvements in, but where unclear on how to identify opportunities for improvement, how to get their team involved in the process and on board with any changes, and how to prioritise any business changes.

Where: Our client recognised they needed to step back and spend some time on their business, rather than in it, to find ways to eliminate waste, improve their operational efficiency, and reduce costs in the business - all of which would lead to improved profitability.

How: We met with the owners of the business and worked through our operational efficiency diagnositc tools to get an understanding of the current state, pains, and frustrations they were having - particularly in relation to reduced profitability. To help them pinpoint where bottlenecks or bleeds might be occuring that were contributing to these pains, we ran a workshop with the business owners and introduced them to the 8 Wastes of Lean, a framework for identifying waste across 8 key areas of the business. The outcome of this session was a hit list of wastes and improvement opportunities identified by the owners.

Knowing there were likely a number of other areas that needed review and improvement, and wanting team involvement in implementing improvements, we then ran a team-wide version of the workshop. Involving the team created buy-in as they nominated various wastes and improvement items, and each person was able to contribute thoughts ideas through the lens of their role (administration, finance, management, delivery etc). From this, a large list of wastes were identified.

We then worked with the team to narrow down which areas we wanted to target and explored potential solutions for each area. We helped prioritise the actions needed, and were able to assist in the implementation of a number of solutions.

After the workshop and initial implementation support, we continued to check in with the client to keep them accountable and ensure progress was being made towards the nominated solutions.