Reducing Waste in Administrative Services with Lean Principles

In the last few decades, lean techniques have been developed for removing with waste in manufacturing. More recently, lean is used outside the manufacturing context as well. This article focuses on using lean thinking for reducing waste in administrative services, i.e., business services with information as input and output. This article delivers three innovations in this field: 1) a lean approach for optimizing administrative processes, 2) an adaption of the waste concept for administration, and 3) a set of lean principles for solving administrative waste. The method is field tested at a university’s student admission process. Two additional principles not well discussed in the lean manufacturing literature were added to address recurrent problems in administration: improving communication and designing information systems to support users. The article also identifies the importance of placing lean workshops in a broader organizational context and we identify multiple client related waste categories.