What Is Lean?

Lean focuses on customer value and respect for workers.  Lean is a way of thinking and acting that puts the customer’s needs first, and offers workers across all levels of an organization the ability to participate in making processes and systems easier and more meaningful.  Lean thinking, tools, and processes help to break down departmental silos so that we work together to reduce waste and create more customer value.  Kaizen events bring together cross-departmental teams to find ways to continuously improve the services FM provides to campus.

What can you expect along Facilities Management’s Lean journey?

FM is in the process of finding a consultant who will help us to launch Lean within FM in the first couple of months of 2014.  We will start with some pilot projects, in which cross-functional teams will work together to find innovative solutions to issues that bug us and bug our customers.  Solutions found will be tested and implemented to see if they make sense and improve FM employees’ lives as well as our customers’ lives.  You can expect to see Lean grow to all departments throughout FM as we move from pilot projects to integrated daily Lean exercises and management.

Who else has adopted Lean?

FM directors and management visited the University of Washington’s Finance and Facilities group in October to learn how they have transformed their business practices to be less time-wasting, less headache-inducing, and more collaborative and customer-driven.  UW Finance and Facilities gives all employees the means and support to implement their ideas to make their workplace better a reality.  U of U FM management has also visited Autoliv in Orem, a renowned manufacturing firm that has adopted and excelled using Lean culture and has implemented over 35,000 employee ideas!

Facilities Management is Ready to Begin our Lean Journey!