By: Vigneshwaran S T 
Introduction:
The Objective of the Blog is to inform Growing Businesses and Entrepreneurs that “Simpler the Techniques they use greater the Productivity can be achieved.” Implementing Lean processes suitable for the Business by understanding the Industry and Business provides a greater result in terms of growth. Reducing Management Time by reducing Manual and Operational activities involved by the Management in the Business. Taking the Management towards the Growth and Development oriented decision making is the real productivity. The lean techniques are to determine an efficient process flow by removing less productive activities and implementing a flow suitable for the Business and its Stakeholders. Building up an Interdependent process with Controls ensures higher Productivity with due diligence.
Understanding the Business to Develop Lean Techniques:
It is very Important to Understand the Business from Inside and Outside to Develop a lean technique.
Understanding it Inside:
- Understanding the Product or Service.
- Knowing the Vision, Mission, Business Model, and Goals of the Management.
- Knowing the Organization Structure.
- Understanding the Workflow and Process from the Initial to End Product/Service.
- Knowing the Strengths and Weakness.
- Knowing the Employee Mode
Understanding it Outside:
- Understanding the Environment of the Business.
- Knowing the Competitors.
- Understand the Opportunities and Threats available.
- Knowing the Technological changes happening in the Industry.
Analyzing from Inside and Outside with Data is very important to making a Decision. Going through a complete Diagnosis helps the Implement a well-designed technique.
Lean Techniques:
- Automation.
- Standard Operating Procedures Process Optimization.
Automation:
With the Rapid growth in the World of Technology, “not using technology is a be crime.” Automation of Redundant and Repetitive work will increase the productivity of the Business and make the work efficient. Automation can reduce the cost, save time, and reduce duplication of work.
The Problem: A leading manufacturer struggled to process hundreds of invoices from multiple vendors each month. The format of these scanned/digital invoices significantly varied among the vendors; more than four full-time employees were manually transcribing data from these invoices into ERP, which considerably delayed the processing. The end-to-end process was further delayed due to several hierarchical approvals.
The solution: RPAs were deployed to automate time-intensive and manual operations involved in processing invoices. The RPAs are helped to read and understand data from several types of semi-structured and unstructured scanned and image-based documents, present the extracted data to users via an intuitive interface, and feed them into ERP. This solution significantly expedited invoice approvals and can be easily scaled up to manage increasing invoices.
The Problem: A Company took more time to Reconcile the Cash flow from the Operations to the Actuals, and the Intimation to the Management was missing, due to which the Accounts team spent more than half a day checking the Cash flows.
The Solution: Provide a Data Capturing Tool to provide an automated Data Capturing and Provide with a Reconciliation Tool with the Help of Google Sheets. Setting up escalations makes the Reconciliation work simple without any Pen and Paper.
The Problem: A Manufacturing Company faced difficulty maintaining Stock and Production in Tally. It was difficult to have control of the Production Process, Laboratory, etc. The Company required Alerts, Escalations, and Controls throughout the Process.
The Solution: Providing an ERP with all modules from Purchase – Pay. Understanding the Business and workflow with a well-organized Alerts and Escalations reduce management and Employee timing in the Workflow. Deployment, Increased the Productivity by setting up Controls and Communications all around the Plant.
The Problem: A high-tech manufacturer facing fierce competition needed to accelerate time-to-market, but its highly skilled employees were spending a considerable amount of time performing manual processes across multiple systems. Job requisitions, purchase orders, contract compliance, invoice reconciliations, and customer requests were all incredibly time consuming processes that involved multiple unintegrated systems. Redundant verifications further amplified the problem and negatively impacted the success of product launches.
The Solution: The manufacturer automated more than 20 business processes to solve the numerous back-office operations issues. RPA Bots were deployed within 10 days to automate the job requisition process, enabling savings. Invoice reconciliation and shipment tracking processes were also automated. As a result of these measures, the manufacturer realized a 40% reduction in total operating costs.
Process Optimization:
“Success Needs a Process” – Building a process oriented organization to run a Management Independent work. As mentioned earlier less the Management in Operations is more efficient in their time in Business Strategies (Stabilize, Growth, Turnaround, etc..). A process-driven organization is one that places a strong emphasis on defining, documenting, and optimizing its business processes to achieve its goals and objectives. These processes are the structured activities and tasks carried out to produce a product or service, manage operations, and meet customer needs.
How a Process is built:
- Understanding the Business as said earlier in the Blog.
- Structuring a Workflow from the Organisation Structure with a connectivity to each process.
- Setting up Authentication and Authorization of Work in the Process.
- Segregation of work is done as at least there are two-time verification of the work by any other Person in each Process.
- Ensuring that at Important Points Management Are Involved to Check Then Process.
- Information’s that need to be consulted with the Management are kept along the flow.
- Automating the Process were ever there is a scope to reduce the Manual Work.
Process differs from each Industry for Example:
Manufacturing:
Purchase Request – Purchase Quotation – Purchase Order – Gate Entry – Item Inward (GRN & Quality) – Landed Cost (Loading & Unloading) – Invoicing – Payables – Payments – Accounts
Bill of Material (Material Requirement Planning) – Production Order – Issue of Raw Materials – Receipt of Finished Goods – Sales
Sales Quotation – Sales Order – Invoicing – Delivery – Receivables – Sales Return – Receipt of Cash – Accounts
Retail:
Procurement Planning – Purchase Request – Purchase Order – Lorry Receipt – Goods Receipt Note (GRN) – Invoicing – Barcoding – Payables – Accounts – Payment – Sales – Receivables – CRM – Admin
Logistics:
Dispatch Planning – Route Planning – Vehicles Performance Review – Vehicle Request – Vehicle Allocation – Man Power Allocation – Tracking – Escalations to Client – Expense Booking – Accounts
In Various Industries the Process differ as per its nature of business. The overall Process is simple but as per each company and Stakeholders it differs.
Advantage of Process optimization:
- Clearly defined processes enable employees to work more efficiently and productively by providing step-by-step guidelines for tasks
- Standardized processes ensure consistency in how tasks are performed, leading to consistent product or service quality.
- A process-driven organization is more likely to engage in continuous improvement initiatives since processes are regularly reviewed for optimization.
- Streamlined processes lead to faster response times and improved customer service, resulting in higher customer satisfaction.
Conclusion:
To conclude,
A Lean Management Techniques through automation and Process optimization helps the Organization to be more efficient and productive. Businesses to grow and Prosper Can Automate the Management Element and setting up controls through process integration. In the modern world of rapid changes, a well-structured process roots to the Development of the Organization. Automation keeps the business in the race when every organization try to grow through online, web and AI. A combination of the two will provide a Lean Techniques to Maximize Productivity of Management.
