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Vol 30 - No 05 - July 2004 Book review:Value Stream Management for the Lean Office How many of our IOM members know how much value adding activity they have in their offices?……or should I write how little value adding? How many of our IOM members know that only 10% of the work being done in their companies’ offices brings any benefit to customers, employees and shareholders? How many of our members use the highly successful lean techniques in their offices? This detailed, how to do book is about techniques developed from the Toyota approach and used success-fully in production for the last 40 years. Today these techniques have an impact in administration which the authors claim accounts for ‘80% of the cost of doing business’. Both the experienced practitioner and the beginner will find value in this how to do book. The experienced can compare his approach with that detailed in this book. The beginner should trial the recommendations in order to appreciate the benefits that are available. Written by experienced consultants who ‘dedicated the last 5 years to creating, documenting and improving the adaptation of lean techniques into the office’this book attempts to answer key questions which every- one faces at the beginning and during every project. Key questions What steps do I take to eliminate waste in my key activities? How can I record a complicated series of operations so as to formulate much improved workflow and higher productivity? How can I ensure that my customers, colleagues and co-makers/co-designers support my improvement project? Each project has different challenges which need different approaches. For example, what time period should be used to analyse current workflow? It is a shorter time period in a Customer Services department than in an R&D department….but how short and how can this be decided? What unit measure of work should be used? It is easier to find an answer in a Sales rather than in a R&D department. This book has several helpful features/benefits: it describes an eight-step approach it offers a visual means to map and record activities, the so-called storyboard. explanations are supported by a detailed, real-life case study. Reading between the lines it is obvious (and reassuring!) that the authors met resistance to lean improvements. Their book emphasises the importance of working with people to ensure that implementations are successful. Throughout the book we are reminded of this. ‘The key ingredient in this recipe is the involvement of people through-out the process’ ‘Make the effort to treat everyone with dignity and respect’ ‘The purpose is not to make people work faster rather to streamline the flow to have the work move faster through the value stream’ ‘Put people first. Never underestimate or disrespect people’  ‘Always consider people in every decision. Do a lot of listening’. Non-value-adding work is often called waste. In support of the authors I mention that in the Netherlands we are asked not to use such an emotive word as waste (verspilling) as it upsets people and increases their resistance to improvement change. Recommended. Brian J. O’Connor, FIOM B J O’Connor International Limited Page number: 13 Word count: 530 Related Topics: Lean operations