And finally, our number 1 winner for our most popular blog posts on the Superior Business Solutions Business Blog from 2014, is How to Address the Seven Wastes Identified in LEAN Manufacturing with Corporate Kiosk. We hope you enjoy the recap and check out the rest of the month’s countdown of our top 5 posts of 2014. Next week we will end with a special thank you from us to you!
How Corporate Kiosk Addresses the Seven Wastes Identified in LEAN and Helps You Beat Your Competition
One of the most common goals of beating the competition in any industry or organization is cutting expenses through waste reduction. After all, why would you not start with internal improvement? Waste reduction can be best achieved with a management concept that supports a zero waste policy, called LEAN manufacturing. The wastes in question pertain to the seven deadly reasons for under-productivity and delay identified by a majority of companies around the world.
The best lean strategies are the ones that effectively combat all seven of these wastes. We’d like to introduce you to a solution, which requires no new capital expenditures even while answering the waste issue in your facility: Corporate Kiosk, our lean e-procurement solution.
The 7 Wastes and Corporate Kiosk’s 7 Responses
Waste #1 – Waiting: “Time is money,” that old aphorism from Benjamin Franklin hasn’t changed a wit since the seventeen hundreds. So cliché by now, it probably goes without saying, but it calls up an important question: Can some tasks be done parallel rather than in a series?
Response: Corporate Kiosk allows approvals to happen in parallel to reduce Cycle Time.
Waste #2 – Transportation: We live in an age of motion or movement-related questions, and the waste involved in shipping brings up a whole new set of issues. What if you could save the manpower, the fuel, the maintenance, the time? Can the process be configured to move a product to the next operation, rather than have people do the moving?
Response: With Corporate Kiosk’s XML Integration, the order can move directly into and through the ERP system to eliminate re-keying at the order entry, production, shipping, and reconciliation steps.
Waste #3 – Processing: The assembly line can always be reshaped and improved. Change is uncomfortable, but if a company asks itself if some tasks can be combined or eliminated, it will probably find that they can.
Response: Corporate Kiosk can be configured for replenishment as well as for new orders, combining the two into one.
Waste #4 – Motion: What supports – such as fixtures, new equipment, or special tools – could speed up your process? Sometimes it requires more money spent upfront to save on other waste issues later on. But apart from new and expensive hardware, there’s one easy answer: Corporate Kiosk can be configured to allow multiple shipping locations for a single order. It’s available on-demand from anywhere, at any time.
Waste #5 – Poor “Quality”: This is often a subtle process where small changes might eliminate small errors. But small errors add up and can cause big problems if left to accumulate. Corporate Kiosk eliminates re-keying, which has been proven to reduce errors. In addition, the visual approval process removes the time and errors associated with phone, fax, and email-based approval systems.
Waste #6 – Inventory: Sometimes the concept of lean manufacturing leads to questions that imply broad changes across a company’s this-is-the-way-we-do-things mentality, but those who adapt survive. So, can we operate without WIP (inventory)?
Response: Yes! Corporate Kiosk allows an organization to display inventory available and to set thresholds for re-order. Thumbnail images of products eliminate the practice of “ordering just to see what it looks like.”
Waste #7 – Overproduction: Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon famously said that his goal was for Amazon warehouses to always have at least two copies of every book ever published. Safety stock is tempting, but, unless you’re Amazon, unnecessary and potentially wasteful. With Corporate Kiosk the operation can produce to order rather than for inventory because of reductions in cycle time and improved demand visibility across the entire ecosystem.
Finding LEAN and Beating the Competition
Anytime you can kill two birds with one stone in the manufacturing process, that’s LEAN, and Corporate Kiosk is the slingshot solution. You’ll begin to see ROI (not to mention environmental benefits) almost instantly with these waste reduction methods, so take on a LEAN mentality and check out Corporate Kiosk. Feel free to contact us with any further questions you might have.
