Operational Excellence in Your Office ─ A Guide to Achieving Autonomous Value Stream Flow With Lean Techniques

This book presents nine guidelines for creating flow in any office environment. Each chapter describes one guideline using text, illustrations, and diagrams to provide an understanding of why creating flow in the office is essential and how to achieve it. Accounting for the reality that most office employees are required to work on many different things throughout the day, the book details a step-by-step methodology for leveraging traditional value stream flow to create Operational Excellence. It also describes "self-healing" flow, where employees are capable of identifying and fixing flow problems without management intervention.

Kevin J. Duggan has more than 30 years of experience applying advanced Lean techniques to achieve Operational Excellence. He is the author of three books on the subject:Design for Operational Excellence: A Breakthrough Strategy for Business Growth(McGraw-Hill, 2011), Creating Mixed Model Value Streams (Productivity Press, 2002), andThe Office That Grows Your Business: Achieving Operational Excellence in Your Business Processes(The Institute for Operational Excellence, 2009).

A recognized authority on Operational Excellence, Duggan has contributed to publications such asIndustry Week, Aviation Week, Food Engineering, Flow Control, Assembly, Lean Management Journal,and Plant Services, and has appeared on CNN and the Fox Business Network. He is a frequent keynote speaker, master of ceremonies, and panelist at both public and private conferences globally, and he also lectures graduate students in colleges throughout the United States.

In 1998, Duggan founded Duggan Associates (North Kingstown, Rhode Island), an international training and advisory firm that assists companies in applying advanced Lean techniques to their manufacturing and office operations through hands-on support and workshops. Since Duggan Associates’ inception, he has helped Fortune 50 corporations as well as small businesses with single site operations in the insurance, engineering development, financial services, aerospace, energy, and manufacturing industries.

In 2007, Duggan founded the Institute for Operational Excellence (also in North Kingstown), the leading educational center on Operational Excellence, which provides resources, such as workshops, online training, how-to articles, and books to a global community of members.