The Lean Office game

This business training game is an experiential learning simulation based around processing customer orders for computer equipment. Participants in the Lean Office game are asked to take on various roles. The game includes sales, customer liaison, finance, transport/logistics, operations, warehouse and supervision. The objective of the game is to highlight typical inefficiencies that are found in modern office work environments and demonstrate how simple changes can be implemented to improve effectiveness and customer satisfaction. The participants are challenged to correctly complete data on invoices and order acknowledgement forms. The game aims to cover the following key areas:

1. Multiple signatures in getting purchase/order no's
2. Batch & queue of information
3. Personal filing systems
4. Multiple sign-off's and delays they cause
5. Reports that nobody reads
6. Poor office layout and excessive walking
7. Unpredictable lead-times
8. Out of date reports
9. Lost data and sales opportunities
10. Data input errors
11. Lack of skills and training
12. Artificial demand and rework
13. Waste of customers time
14. Delivering what the customer does not want
15. Wrong/misaligned targets

The Lean Office game takes about 3 hours to run and following a first round, the existing process is mapped and improvements agreed and developed by the team before re-running the game with the new improved processes.

• Layout
• Push/pull
• One piece flow
• Kanban
• Work balance
• Benefits of training

Our lean simulations are complete, ready to run games containing:

• Dismantled plugs, screwdrivers for assembly, stopwatches for timing
• Instruction booklet and USB memory stick with PowerPoint standard operating procedures and Excel measurement table
• Standard operating procedures with colour photos
• Objectives

Number of participants:

• Each lean manufacturing simulation can be run with 6 to 12 people
• Additional people can be observers

Running the Plug Game

• This is normally run over 4 rounds of 10 minutes with discussion on learning and improvements made between each round The whole game normally takes 2 -3 hours to complete Each lean simulation can be used many times over