Lean Office and digital transformation: a case study in a services company

Abstract

- Highlights: a high percentage of the Western world workforce works in offices; Value Stream Map, a lean tool, allows waste identification in services companies; Lean Management helps companies to prepare for digital transformation; there is scarce scientific literature ondigital transformation and Lean Office.
 -Goal: thepurpose of this article is to report the implementation of Lean Office and digital transformation in a services company.
 - Design / Methodology / Approach: the research method was a qualitative approach, with literature review followed by a case study, and data collected until September 19, 2018.
 - Results: the comparative results between current and future Value Stream Maps showed consistent improvements in terms of performance indicators. The lead time is expected to fall from 101 hours to 64,65 hours under normal conditions, and from 221 hours to 114,65 hours if there is a need to bypass through process # 6.
 - Limitations of the investigation: there are limitations in this study.Basically, the time frame until the digitalization of the processes # 1, 2, 3 and 6 have been completed, in order to allow the comparison with the original expectations described in the VSM of the future state.
 - Practical implications: it was possible to demonstrate how the implementation of Lean principles, techniques, and tools can bring benefits to an IoT solutions provider.
 - Originality / Value: no records were found on Scopus and Web of Science databases for the search sentence "digital transformation" AND "lean Office", representing a gap to be filled with this study.

Mejorando la eficiencia en las Organizaciones Públicas y de Servicios: Una revisión general de las aplicaciones de la metodología Lean Office

“…Entre las aplicaciones de LO desde la perspectiva de servicios en las empresas destacan la optimización de los costos administrativos (Bracci, 2013), el diseño de unidades bancarias de empresas del sector financiero en donde lograron una reducción de tiempo de proceso del 45% (Calsavara, 2016), la mejora de la eficiencia del procesamiento de datos y por tanto de las operaciones de un departamento logístico que se encarga del suministro de materias primas en una empresa de componentes multimedia para automóviles (Monteiro et al, 2017), el uso de LO en la transformación digital de empresas de servicios de IoT o internet de las cosas (Besser Freitag, 2018), la reducción de gastos de impresión y papelería en un departamento de facturación de una empresa de servicios de electricidad (Almeida et al, 2019) y en el proceso de capacitación de su personal gerencial en un proceso de restructuración (Ribeiro et al, 2019), y la eliminación de desperdicios en el proceso de separación de materiales en el almacen de una empresa del sector energético para mejorar el suministro en las estaciones de trabajo (dos Santos et al, 2021).…”

A Lean Service Conceptual Model for Digital Transformation in the Competitive Service Industry

“…Despite the growing acknowledgment of the significance of lean principles and digital transformation within the service industry, a discernible gap persists in the existing body of knowledge. While previous studies have delved into either lean practices or digital transformation individually, there remains a shortage of comprehensive research exploring the synergistic effects arising from the integration of lean principles with digital transformation in service organizations [13] . This study endeavours to address this gap by providing a holistic examination of how the convergence of lean principles and digital transformation can contribute to waste reduction in the operational service industry [14].…”

Service model based on Lean Service: Standardized Work and 5S to increase customer satisfaction in a veterinary SME

“…[5] Research focused on a group of hospitals in Malaysia identified that they did not have standardized processes, so there were waste and long waiting times in care processes [6]. Following this same line, A case study was developed in an IoT solutions provider located in Brazil, and it was able to demonstrate how the implementation of Lean principles, techniques and tools can bring benefits to the Operations department in reducing waiting times [7].…”