A book published this month details how organizations can use lean management tools to improve productivity by 400 percent.

In The Complete Lean Enterprise: Value Stream Mapping for Administrative and Office Processes (Productivity Press, 2004), authors Beau Keyte and Drew Locher contend that much of the untapped potential for improvement in an enterprise’s productivity lies in its nonproduction areas. Most companies that use lean principles, they say, do so only in their manufacturing sectors, resulting in productivity increases of up 35 to 40 percent over several years. However, the authors say that 90 percent of waste-eliminating opportunities are outside of the shop floor. When lean management is applied enterprisewide, Keyte and Locher say, lean goals can be expanded to a 400 percent improvement in 10 years.

Keyte and Locher use value stream mapping to help users see administrative waste, identify its sources and develop a future state that eliminates it. The book also includes definitions and discussions of office performance metrics, functional lean perspectives, case studies representing two levels of mapping and examples of companies using lean thinking to improve business practices.

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