World of Business: Lean Operations Research Assignment

Lean Operations
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Institutional Affiliation
Lean Operations
In today's competitive world of business, every organization is striving to create more value to its customers while employing fewer resources with the aim of optimizing profit. In most cases, this dream is not achieved due to a lot of wastes in the process of transacting the businesses of the organization. These wastes include transportation, motion, inventory and waiting among others. Applying lean principles in the organization can offer a solution to those problems by eliminating the wastes in the process through a collaborative team effort by the members of the organization. Lean philosophy stresses on establishing more value for customers while minimizing the resources used. This is achieved by optimizing the workflow. Optimized workflow results in an organized manner of operations in which the employees are efficiently and effectively accessed to the tools they need to deliver a delightful customer service. The costs are minimized as a result of efficiency in the workflow. With fewer costs and high customer service, an organization will automatically lead towards higher returns regarding profits. However, most organizations have not yet leaned out their processes partly due to lack of knowledge of leaning out and ignorance. As a result, there are more wastes in such organizations which negatively impacts on customer service and satisfaction and reduces the marginal returns in the form of business profit. This paper seeks to help such managers by depicting a distinction between a leaned out process and un-leaned out one through and to show the benefits of leaning a process as well as describing the actual process of leaning out a business organization.
Characteristics of an Organization Full Of Wastes (Not Leaned Out)
An organization that is not leaned can easily be identified from the frequent wastes that occur within the organization. There are numerous characteristics that signify wastes in such organization as was observed in company XYZ (Benn & Griffiths, 2014). The organization does not prioritize customer value. Rather, the employees simply work out their duties to accomplishment without focusing on the quality of the service to the customer. The managers also focus less on creating the customer (Benn & Griffiths, 2014). They, instead, focus on producing more products faster which are of low quality. The customers sometimes reject such products leading to a loss (Karim & Arif-Uz-Zaman, 2013).
Also, there is a disorder, and the tools are highly disorganized. Machines are disorganized, that is, they are not properly placed where they should be. For example, there are only a few printing machines which are used by the employees but apparently are designated in the manager's office (Karim & Arif-Uz-Zaman, 2013). Any time the employees need to print anything will have to look for the machine in the manager's office and thus waste time traveling to locate the machine. There are no designated places where important tools are placed and much of the time is spent by the employees locating such tools. Every employee uses a given apparatus and places it anywhere yet such apparatus are shared among the employees, and therefore there are so many instances of displacement and time is wasted relocating the equipment (Karim & Arif-Uz-Zaman, 2013). Some of the equipment are to be picked from the stores which are under the manager's mandate and be returned after the work. The employees waste a lot of energy moving equipment to and from the workplace. The situation is worse when the manager reports to work late and the employees have to wait for him to open the store (Karim & Arif-Uz-Zaman, 2013). A lot of time and energy are wasted which translate to reduced productivity in the organization.
Additionally, there is a lack of resilience and exploration of employee's talent. The manager and the supervisors expect the employees to work under the regulations which do not allow them to make any decisions without informing their supervisors or the manager. Consequently, the employees do not correct errors in time since they have to follow the long procedures of reporting before action is taken (Benn & Griffiths, 2014). Talented and skilled employees are not allowed a chance to demonstrate their problem-solving skills and talents which could be a source of new knowledge in the organization (Maestas & Parrish, 2014). The employees cannot do things in a different way as they may perceive to be effective since the management fears trying new ways of doing things for fear of unforeseen risks (Maestas & Parrish, 2014). Therefore, the employees are not empowered to a make autonomous decisions and are demoralized which translates to low customer service quality.
Likewise, the organization does not involve distributors such as wholesalers in the distribution of its products. The company involves itself in the actual distribution of products to the retailers and sometimes the final consumers (Teichgräber & De Bucourt, 2012). The ignorance of using the wholesalers leads to extra costs of distribution incurred through employing truck drivers, servicing the trucks and value of depreciation (Teichgräber & De Bucourt, 2012). These costs summed up together exceed the cost of using wholesalers to distribute the company's products. However, the management of this company has not figured out these wastes.
Further, the organizational management is bothered with fixing problems after the errors have occurred. The emphasis is put in correctional measures in case of errors rather than investing in preventive measures (Alves & Alves, 2015). The products are inspected instead of the process itself so as to fix the likely causes of errors in the final products. Fixing the errors are an extra cost in the organization that leads to waste of time and further resources needed to repair the products (Alves & Alves, 2015). This organization loses a lot of employee's workforce and time in fixing products which could have been prevented by employing preventing measures in the process.
XYZ also lacks standardization of the products which results in non-value addition of products. The employees produce products of varying sizes; often large batch sizes. The employee's often over-process the products as they strive to meet tight tolerances imposed by the supervisors (Benn & Griffiths, 2014). The products are polished beyond the degree desired by the customers, yet there will be no compensation for the extra processing cost incurred in terms of time and resources used. Over-processing and incorrect batch sizes are caused by lack of set quality standards (Teichgräber & De Bucourt, 2012). There are no clear specifications in the company of the products the customers are supposed to produce; rather, they are pressured to produce high quality which is simply stated in plain terms without clear outlines of the high expected quality.
Wastes to Be Eliminated From XYZ In The Process Of Leaning Out
XYZ Company experiences several wastes that ought to be leaned out. These include overproduction, waiting, waste ...