Monday 13 July 2020

Looking to improve operational efficiency: Lean Automation is the Answer

Identifying Lean and Automation Based Opportunities

Lean is engaged way to deal with client’s top-notch expectations to guarantee they get precisely what they need. Lean eliminates waste, variability and inflexibility. Run of the mill IT waste incorporates defects, over-production, waiting, extra-processing, and so on. These wastes can be decreased or killed out completely utilizing lean principles. Initial move towards lean excursion is to recognize opportunities where lean standards can be applied. During lean diagnostic, client need is consistently at the middle. A comprehensive methodology is taken to realize the change by improving organizational procedures, performance management as well as mindsets and skillset of employees.


Process efficiency is the first lever of Lean Lens. There are various tools which are utilised to analyse existing processes. With the goal to recognize process wasteful aspects, Value stream mapping is performed which includes having an organized discourse with bleeding edge staff individuals visually aided by mapping of End-to-End material and information flow.

Demand Capacity Analysis can be a valuable tool to see how employee effort gets divided between various tasks, for instance, documentation, team meetings and so forth. It very well may be limited further by performing Meeting Time Analysis to affirm group meets are adding value and Documentation time Analysis as well, to check for any pointless documentation that can be killed. As demand shifts consistently, Demand variation Analysis can be utilized to dissect employee utilization during times of changing demand. Employee efficiency is analysed by DILO (Day In Life Of) and Context switching Analysis by recognizing time spent in everyday assignments and task switching. In the same way, Management time analysis is performed to distinguish gaps between the current effort being spent on the executive exercises and industry patterns. By limiting the number of tasks, efficiency can be improved as time will be spent on only value adding activities, therefore, Demand reduction analysis is accomplished to distinguish work things which can be shifted left, improved or automated.

As important it is to limit tasks, equally important is the identification of those tasks in which efforts are wasted by overcompensating, to look for such tasks Over-processing Analysis (Gold Plating) is performed. Finally, as agile is an exceptionally productive model, Agile Maturity Analysis is performed to gauge whether teams are taking advantage of tech-enabled practices with teams working in small teams with clear end-to-end ownership.

Another important lever of lean lens is Organisation and Skills, which centres around lean organisation structure and cross skilling/upskilling of employees for better efficiency and client satisfaction. Tools used as part of Organisation and Skills lens include Skill heat maps Analysis to evaluate existing capabilities of the team in different areas. Once skills are identified Individual variability Analysis is done to look for any variability in performance within a team, reasons are sought after for any variation and recommendations are made to identify potential for increase in the team productivity. Team Structure Analysis is done to comprehend existing team structure with reporting and performance lines. For managers, Span of Control Analysis is done to find ratio of managerial effort to technical effort for optimization of the coverage.


To optimize onsite effort and analyse onsite work catalogue that could be moved to offshore, Onsite work Analysis is performed. Onsite team location Analysis (Field Support Model) is used to identify potential to optimize onsite team size by remote support and onsite consolidation. For optimization of resources at each job level based on industry standards Pyramid optimization Analysis is utilized.

Performance Management lever of lean lens utilizes Team Metric Analysis of KPIs to identify gaps to understand coherence in KPIs between different levels. Performance management survey is rolled out to measure team alignment on team vision, KPIs and performance management.

Mindset Behaviour is another lever of lean lens which involves Vision Workshop to bring the team closer and align them for transformation. The objective of the workshop is for group to open-up about existing workplace, group culture and authority.

Voice of Customer is at the core, it focuses on Customer Feedback Analysis which is done to understand customer context to improve project efficiency and its relevance to customer. It includes mapping of key stakeholders in the client organization for an overall understanding of the organizational structure and identification of customer pain points in order to focus on lean and automation efforts to priority elements.

In-depth insight to each tool and analysis mentioned above will be shared in upcoming posts, please follow to keep abreast of latest posts.

Happy Reading 😊

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