Local Companies Employ Global ‘Lean Thinking’

August 3rd, 2010

Mary the receptionist always opens the mail when it comes at around 10 a.m. on Monday. She passes the slit-open envelopes on to John, who sorts the letters by department and gives them to Sue, who passes them around. In the finance office, Joe divides his department’s stack into bills from vendors and payments from customers. By now it’s lunch time, so the paperwork sits on the corner of Joe’s desk until Tuesday because Joe’s noontime meeting lasted until 3 p.m. Sometime the next day, Joe will give the payments to an invoice clerk, who will check off the payments for deposit in the bank.

In the meantime, the payables clerk will start processing vouchers for payment. The vouchers need three approvals, so the paperwork will wend its way from clerk to finance director to vice president of finance and eventually to the mail room. If no one is ill or on vacation, the invoices may finally go out sometime next week. Parts of Monday’s mail could still be on someone’s desk a week or even a month later.

“Lean Thinking” is a better idea: a company culture that emphasizes using less to do more. “It’s lazy and logical,” explained Adam Johnson, Manufacturing-Works field engineer for Natrona, Converse, Niobrara and Goshen counties.

Read the full article by Carol Crump