Elements

The elements of Office Reengineering are focused tactics for helping a company achieve the objectives of quality, short cycles, and added value. These elements are not equally applicable to every business, but provide a system­atic approach to assess the opportunities for improvement. The following paragraphs only introduce these elements and provide the reader a flavor for the intent of the element. Each one certainly is a study in its own right, and is signifi­cantly expanded upon in a full Office Reengineering program.

By examining each element, opportunities for eliminating waste can be readily identified. Performance measure­ments are then used to determine the degree of waste elimination. For example, the quality element may lead the business to measure the number of mistakes on cus­tomer orders in the order entry process. A goal may be to make a 50% reduction in the number of errors in a 90 day timeframe. Once this goal is achieved, an additional 50% should be eliminated, making the errors 25% of the original amount. This "50%" approach can go on continually!

Technology Management Elements

The objective of this element group is to enable an organi­zation to be very responsive to customer needs, and perform in a very short cycle manner. Faster is the key. Customers do not want to wait. These elements enable the business to very extremely responsive to customer needs, and in short order!

Office Layout and Flow addresses the physical layout of the office area. Many offices are functionally arranged: all accounting people are together, all production control are in one place, engineers have their own space, etc. This environment generally results in complicated communica­tion, long cycle times through a process that involves several departments, and a large amount of paper-in-process. The preferred approach is to COLLOCATE people that must interact frequently and are part of a given process. By physically moving people, the communication distance is shorted dramatically, and people can talk to each other about the tasks at hand. Characteristics of this approach are fast cycle times, little paper-in-process, and informal communication systems that often work better that the best computer systems available!

Workers become generalists rather than specialists. One person can handle more tasks and take a job from "cradle to grave". The result is significantly fewer hand-offs in the process which results in much shorter cycle times which results in faster response to customer needs.

An appropriate performance measurement is the distance that a document travels in a given process. Another is the number of square feet of space occupied by the people involved in a process.

State of Readiness means that all equipment and pro­cesses are ready to perform the desired function without delay at any time. For example, computer systems are running without fail, the copying machine is always ready, paper changes can be done by anyone quickly, and docu­ments can be readily obtained. Total productive mainte­nance is a tool and set of techniques that helps ensure that a constant state of readiness exists and cost adding delays are not part of any process.

Performance can be measured here by tracking the portion of time an equipment based process is in service.

Customer Focus means many things, but in this context it means not hassling the customer when they contact us. Contact generally is over the phone, fax, or through the mail. The objective is to take care of the customer need in short order. They do not want to be on hold, passed from one electronic message to another, or have their fax lost for days in the mail system. The customer experience with our business should be absolutely delightful, and in no way cause they any aggravation or hassle.

An example of a performance measurement would be the portion of time the phone is answered (for inbound customer calls) by the third ring. Another may be the average number of times a call must be transferred until the customer is in direct contact with the person who can help them.

Fitness for Use involves presenting information to the next person in the process in an absolutely "fit for use" condition. The document does not need to be reworked, data is in the right format, the material is error free, and
no cost is added to execute the next step in the process. How many times do you receive information in one form and translate it to another form? Probably too many, and this is done only because the information was not presented in
a fit for use condition. This element teaches us to "pass the baton" correctly form one step to the next. Find out the precise needs of the next person in the process and meet those need every time without adding cost.

A performance measurement would be the portion of people in the business who have documented the precise needs of the next step in the process, and have spent a day (or more) being trained in that step.

To be Continued