Ryan Visscher

Date: November 18, 2014

Name: Lean for Service

Presenter: Norm Attridge and Ryan Visscher

The traditional top down leadership strategy is not effective in this current generation. Many business owners are seeking new approach, such as bottom up approach, to produce effective decision making. However, within a period of time, people refer back to the old ways of operating. First West Credit Union presents “Lean for Service” seminar to educate business owners to find the ways to simplify their current operation. Norm Attridge, the Vice President of First West Capital, and Ryan Visscher, the Manager of Leaning & Development of First West Credit Union, will introduce the concept of “Lean” to help business owners understand the big picture of simplification. This seminar will be beneficial for owners who are looking for a change in their procedures.

What is Lean? And why?

Lean defines as efficiency, simplicity and better ways of doing things. It represents the standardization of work procedure. Visscher defines it as to minimizing waste and maximizing member values.

Visscher believes lean is important in business because it can utilize the existing resources and compete with others. The competition is always changing and people are taking their expectation to put in somewhere else. The path of change is rapidly increased every day and businesses need to be able to keep consistent and adapt the new ways of thinking.

The benefit of lean is to reduce the cost, defects, inventory, space and lead time. Nevertheless, it also increases the productivity, capacity and member experience. Based on stats, First West Credit Union helps Envision using the lean concept to save over 15,000 hours of staff time. Lean strategy also helps Envision to save over $577,000 hard cover expenses, 3.12% operating efficiency, and 28,000 membership growth.

What is value?

Visscher defines value as anything clients will pay for. Lean can remove the obstacles in the process of getting the value. In average, only 5% of business time is considered value added for members. There are things to hold them back. In traditional thinking, businesses want to increase that 5%. However, in lean thinking, businesses should concentrate on reducing the remaining 95%.

In addition, Visccher believes all waste can have visible and hidden. The hidden wastes are the one that might be out of control. However, businesses need to figure out the wastes that are blocking their procedures.

8 Wastes

Visccher categorizes 8 types of wastes that could potentially be a threat in business procedure.

Transportation	The unncessary movement from people, products and information
Inventory	The additional storage from supplies, documentation, and information
Motion	The repetitive movements from bending, turning, reaching, and lifting
Waiting	The time spend on one activity to another
Over Production	Producing more than necessary requirement
Over Processing	The additonal efforts that do not create from services to others
Defects	The errors, incomplete information, and scrap
Skills	Not able to release the full potential

It takes extra time to move one thing to another in the office. People tend to hold too much “just in case” in their extra stash. The constant moving can create pressure for staff members. Most of the time staff members are waiting for further instruction. Moreover, people are trying to out think their boss to do more than they need; however, people are also creating redundant effort on small tasks. People need to be aware of errors around the premise and many staff members are not challenged in their job roles.

Business owners need to go down and dig deeper where the decision is made. They need to understand how the process is created and they need to appreciate the work people commit.

3 Kaizen Methodologies

Visccher suggests 3 possible strategies to help business owners to start lean. They are 5s, process time reduction, and value innovation. This seminar will emphasize on the 5s approach.

5s

5s uses visualization techniques to help business owners to create more effective procedure.

Sort -> Stabilize -> Shine -> Standardize -> Sustain

Business owners need to take the current procedure and group them based on their similarity characteristic. After the sorting, business owners need to connect them based on the priority or connection. Business owners can shine them by making them more visible and easy to distinguish. Each part will need to communicate based on the change occur. This will create the standardization. Moreover, business owners need to sustain the process to ensure the change will happen in future.

Business owners can create a time frame to identify the issue and the risks. Simplify the procedures can help business owners figure out the obstacles. Lean for service is not a complicated approach and every business can implement it.

“Lead from the top, light the fire from below”