One of the best attributes in an efficient workplace is the observance of Lean Six Sigma Office operations. This methodology aims on providing a productive and enhanced customer service from employees and the entire business processes are well managed. Lean office routines can be significantly applied on office supply waste management, clerical/administrative tasks, and the environment. Moreover, to improve organizational and lean office practices, one must be knowledgeable in this field of management.

What is a Lean Office?

A lean office is technically the application of recognizing and reducing time and asset waste. It uses lean strategies like Value Stream Mapping to produce a scheme that can stabilize the office’s productivity.

What are the top 5 must dos for a lean office?

Though it may not seem to be an easy task, observing Lean Office practices is necessary to run an efficient office. The following are some of the must-dos to consider for Lean Office practices:

1. Set a limitless office – An office without boundaries is basically a workplace where the environment uses no physical confinements or obstruction. Therefore, members of the workplace are allowed to communicate freely among each other. Everyone can reach out and interact with the rest as they please or as a need to do so arises. This is known as a collaborative work environment.
2. Visional Admiral – As for management strategies, an evident command over the workplace gives way to key operating indicators or KOI. This will stabilize Plan, Do, Check, and Adjust or PDCA to fill empty space in working procedures. Processes, protocols, and organization are enhanced to provide a more advanced and consistent work strategy.
3. VSM or Value Stream Mapping – In this step, blunt analysis of the incoming of data and tools are performed while briefing it and visualizing its conditions ahead of time. It is an excellent manner of recognizing the NVA or the Non Value Add proceedings in the company.
4. Basic Tasks – The order of procedures, time frames, and additional factors for assuring quality performance are what these basic steps refer to. It aids in coming up with observable results, lessens the chances of arriving at further mishaps and eradicates inconstancy among members of the company. The procedures involve Labor Arrangements, Time Frames, Set Processes, Human Resource Preparations, Asset Outlining, and Improvement on Phase Extents.

The use of Lean implementation in every institution or company is inevitable. Routines that evolve around this management organization system promotes eliminating evident and directorial hindrances for workers to freely voice their concerns. Moreover, lean management in the office can benefit the company by establishing tasks that will guarantee a positive outcome.

If you are looking to land top manufacturing talent, contact the staffing experts at Davis Staffing today.

If you are looking for ways to take your lean manufacturing to an all new level, then implementing real-time data capabilities can help. There are several things that you can do to make this happen, but utilizing the real time data for its full potential in all Lean strategies and practices will prove to be the most beneficial.

Use Second Order Information as Leverage

Using the up-to-the-second standard deviation data or the up-to-the-minute data, as well as the variability and micro-trends, you can trigger both better actions and control processes (real-time TOC, dynamic Kanban flow, dynamic buffers), plus can support all Six-sigma efforts and reduction in the DMIAC cycle times in projects. Standard lead time and standard cost can all be improved as well for improvement in the master data accuracy.

Extend Both the In Process Visibility & Enterprise Ops Decision Support Intelligence

This is not the same as the after the fact analysis or the regular batch business intelligence, but rather the real time visibility that is in proves that allows for human decision making to be made promptly. In other words, give the executives the ‘steering wheel.’

While the executives don’t need to know all the nitty gritty details about the job at hand, they do need to understand the basic overall demand of the position from their own perspective in order to be able to make better judgment calls and decisions regarding many things, but not limited to an unplanned failure in a bottleneck machine, a natural disaster, or other critical event.

Customers and Supply Chain Partners – Enable Pull Process

The synchronization of sales and suppliers is a key element to Lean initiative, even though most of the Lean improvement efforts are made in the main area of the production facility. In order to see the full potential of the Lean practices, the coordination of the outside downstream and upstream partners must be in sync.

Sustain Kaizen

The Lean journey sees changes prompted by Kaizen many times. Whether it be the work sequence, methods, equipment, shop floor layout, people, or material, it can all be captured and made available, making it possible for real time reports and operational KPI’s that are so critical to performance and rapid Kaizen measurement results.

Increase Process/ Flexibility with Supply Network

When you can supply the real time data to the people that can immediately act upon it, then you create the platform for innovations and new levels in the supply network flexibility and the process behind it. With the data, reconfiguring supply networks, ramping up suppliers, and switching processes becomes easier to do and decisions are reached with much more confidence.

Using these real time data suggestions can get your company to set goals sooner than envisioned. Visit the Davis Staffing blog for industry news each week!

As a manufacturing facility in a struggling economy, you may be finding it challenging to meet expenses on a regular basis. It’s not uncommon with fluctuating costs in materials, shipping and transportation, and even the costs of recruiting manufacturing personnel. Yet, there is a way you can bring in extra revenues this year. Joining an emergency demand response program can improve your cash flow, lower your facility costs, and help to maintain a thriving manufacturing business. Here’s how.

A demand response program is one that asks manufacturing companies to reduce their electricity use during certain peak times, in an effort to protect the electricity grid. To be compensated as a manufacturing company, it’s required to reduce electricity usage in return for financial compensation. This can be significant, considering that a large manufacturer may receive a grant payment of as much as $65,000 during a single demand response event, simply by cutting power usage by 1,500 KW.

On the backend, the company will also save money by reducing electricity utility bills. For the average manufacturing plant, this can be in the thousands of dollars. This is money that can be invested in other aspects of running a business, such as staff training, equipment upgrades, and building maintenance. The rewards and incentives of demand response program participants are many, including the ability to be a leading energy conservation company in the industry.

Additionally, it’s possible to reduce damage and wear to costly manufacturing equipment during power grid downtimes. During unexpected power surges and voltage fluctuations, these electrical pulses can cause damage to equipment and even internal computing systems. However, as a participant in the demand response program, your company will instead be alerted to potential brownouts and surges in the power grid, giving you the ability to shut down beforehand.

Be prepared to participate in a demand response program by understanding that your facility will have to be wait listed for a time before acceptance, and you must be flexible in order to meet each program. This means also having access to temporary contract workers who can manage second and third-shift working hours, when your manufacturing plant will be encouraged to be at full operation. However, the rewards for participating in a demand response effort can far outweigh the requirements.

If you are looking for more manufacturing industry news, follow the Davis Staffing blog. Davis Staffing is the leading provider of staffing services in Illinois.

Employers today are facing many more applicants than there are open assignments available. In many instances, there are literally hundreds of applications and resumes being received for a single open position.

One way business owners and hiring managers are going about the process of sorting through the long line of resumes is with the assistance of an employee tracking system.

Why are Employers Turning to Tracking Systems?

While some job candidates feel slighted by the process altogether, employee tracking systems are a valuable tool for recruiters. However difficult it is to know that you’re investing time, effort, and energy into the job search process only to be removed from consideration by a computer program or algorithm, it’s oftentimes necessary to manage candidate selection.

Companies aren’t likely to change their stand on candidate tracking systems for several reasons, including these.

1)   Employee tracking systems save time. Businesses today are being forced to do more work with fewer people. It’s a given. The one thing they don’t have in excess is free time to sift through hundreds of applications to find the few standout candidates. If they did have the time, there wouldn’t be a need to hire more workers.

2)   These systems help businesses avoid any appearance of discrimination or any other type of hiring misconduct. The systems don’t judge suitability based on age, religion, race, or any other defining and legally protected characteristic that doesn’t pertain to the responsibilities of the job and experience in the industry. Even better, for many business owners, is that the system makes it easy for them to show compliance with federal laws concerning discrimination if a question ever does arise.

3)   Tracking systems save businesses money. In the end, that’s what it generally comes down too. Many of the systems are free for businesses to us and it frees up precious man hours (that cost quite a bit of money) to be spent on the business of making money for the company rather than reading through resume after resume.

What do Candidate Tracking Systems Mean for Job Seekers?

The long and short answer is that they mean you must learn to create resumes designed to make it past the employment tracking software. Once you begin creating resumes intended to make it through the first round of elimination you should start to see a few more calls for interviews coming your way. Here are a few steps you’ll want to keep in mind when creating resumes for these systems.

1)   Create resumes the systems can read. Most of these systems cannot read PDF files and have a difficult time understand graphs and tables. The simple solution is to leave them off your resume.

2)   Include work experience on your resume and label it as “work experience.” This is language the systems are taught to read and comprehend. The order of items in this section is also important. List the place of employment first, followed by the job title, and then the dates of employment. Creativity was once the key component. Now, however, you want to design resumes to appeal to the sorting software.

3)   Write a longer resume. Short and sweet was once the order of the day. The rules have changed once again. Longer resumes give you more opportunities to work the appropriate keywords the company is looking for into your resume. Fill out your resume and create one that is 2 to 4 pages long instead.

Once you understand why employers are using employee tracking systems and what the systems want from you, you are in a much better position to help yourself make it through to the interview process.

Enjoy a previous post on a job search related topic from Davis Staffing:

Stop Screwing Up Your Job Search

Is your organization already using social media for connecting and building your business? If you have not already made your foray into Pinterest, then you may want to start utilizing this fast growing social network in some interesting ways. One of the most interesting ways to use Pinterest is to visually create your business plan.

Never thought of using Pinterest in this manner? Read on to learn how this highly visual networking community can help you create a new or better business plan.

Building a Business Plan with Pinterest

When you stop to think about it, aren’t all standard business plans pretty boring? You are given specific categories to work on, but for those who are more visual in nature this can seem like Chinese Water Torture trying to fill them out. If you’ve ever successfully used the mind-mapping method to build an idea, then you already know you may do well with visual business plan building,

Getting started with Pinterest Visualization

First of all, get a Pinterest account set up specifically for your business needs. This eliminates any personal distraction and puts you into your business mode. Then layout the areas that will become your business plan. These can include:

• Short term and long term goals for your business
• Financial data and funding sources
• Equipment and software needed
• Projected expenses, cash flow, and revenues
• Ideal business models you would like to emulate
• Inspirational companies you inspire to become like
• Where you see yourself visually in 5 years
• Any staffing needs you may have

Once you have established the above elements, you can begin building your business plan on Pinterest. Take your measurable data and convert them to flow charts and pie charts to visually represent where you are going. You can also use a service like liveplan.com to build great looking reports and charts that will stand out.

Mix these reports in with images of companies you like by pinning them to your Pinterest board. Then add images of the equipment, software, staff members, and representations of yourself in the next phase of your business. It’s also very helpful to network with other businesses by including links to any business networking groups you belong to, and pinning your client boards up on your business plan.

By building your visual business plan on Pinterest, you have a way to actually see your business as it grows and becomes successful. You can also plan for any staffing needs you will have over the coming year, to attract candidates to your business by pinning your favorite staffing agency to your board.

Add Davis Staffing to your Pinterest business plan so you can add quality, pre-screened contract employees to your business in the greater Chicago area. Davis Staffing provides staffing support for your business as it evolves into a successful venture.

The world of business is changing fast. Organizations interested in fast growth must do things a little differently than they may have a few years ago. One of the biggest differences is the necessity of using social media to create a buzz and awareness about your business.

A surprising trend that we are seeing with social media is that no business is really spared the need for using it. LinkedIn remains one of the underutilized but oh-so-important social networks that’s ideal to tap into if you’re really interested in growing your business. Here are a few ways you should be using LinkedIn for that purpose.

Join Groups and get Conversations Started

LinkedIn may be the more “grown up” version of social networking, but it’s still very social. You have to really participate in order to make the splash you need to in business today. Join groups that are relevant to your business and participate in the conversations that have been started. Create your own if there aren’t any. Just make sure you follow the rules of each group or it could reflect unfavorably on your business instead of making the positive impression you’re going for.

Ask for Recommendations

This is something you might want to do from employees (past and present—provided they left and/or are employed on good terms) as well as clients you’ve served. It’s not enough to simply grow your business with other consumers. You also want to set your business in a prime situation to attract a talented pool of potential employees too. This is a great way to do that and LinkedIn is one of the best social networks to turn to for professional employees you might want to have as part of your organization.

Keep it Interactive

The sole purpose of social networking, after all, is to socialize. With this in mind you want to keep your networking efforts up day after day and week after week. When someone asks a question that’s perfect for your business to answer, then it’s in your best interest to answer and participate in any follow-up discussion that may be necessary. Interact with the other people in your “groups” as well as those who become part of your circles. It will pay off over time.

LinkedIn can be an excellent tool to help you take your business to the top—especially if you incorporate tips like these into your social media marketing plans. Use it also to help find great candidates who can support your business growth. Let Davis Staffing show you their skills when it comes to sourcing candidates utilizing the best of social media today.

In the world of business, your reputation is everything—especially the way today’s business market moves. The problem is that rumors, whispers, grunts, and grumbles today move at the lightning fast speed of the World Wide Web. In other words, bad news spreads fast on the Internet. Protecting your corporate brand can be a full-time job in and of itself. The bigger the brand; the more protection it requires.

It’s not only prospective clients who pay attention to your online reputation. It’s prospective and current employees as well. People want to work for a company where current employees are generally happy with the state of things. Those who already work for your business love sharing bits and pieces gathered from the rumor mill around the water cooler. Bad news and misinformation can do a lot of harm to morale in the workplace.

Taking Control of Your Company’s Brand Reputation

It’s not always easy to know where to begin when it comes to getting things under control concerning the reputation of your business brand. But, it’s something that must be done. These tips will help you take matters into your own hands and get the results you’re looking for.

1)   Find out what’s being said about your company. This is something that can be accomplished with a simple “Google” search of your company’s name along with key words of phrases such as: reviews, complaints, workers, salary, employees, and careers. You must know what’s out there in order to address potential problems within your company or rumors on the Internet about your company.

2)   Encourage people who are happy working with your company to post online about their positive experiences working for your business. It really doesn’t take much more than to ask your employees. Everyone who works for your company has a vested interest in protecting and defending its reputation. The more people who post positive experiences with your company, the greater the likelihood will be that those results begin to carry more weight with the search engines than the negative results.

3)   Create your own online presence. Start a company blog, create a Facebook page, and begin a Twitter account. Each of these things allow you to control the script about your company that’s being played out across the social network. It puts you in the driver’s seat.

Once you begin to retake control of your online brand presence in order to secure your company’s reputation you should begin to see more favorable results in your recruitment efforts. You’ll be able to bring in top-tier candidates for positions that are available and morale within the ranks will improve day by day.

Recruiting the top talent in the Greater Chicago and Northwest Indiana requires more than just a branded presence. It means working with a quality staffing agency like Davis Staffing to find skilled employees.

The days of wondering if social media is going to become an issue in the work place are far behind you. If you don’t take swift action now to establish a social media policy that’s fair to all, your company could face some serious social media blowback. This isn’t a problem that’s limited to big business. Any business that has employees needs to adopt a strong social media policy.

The bottom line is that your employees represent your company—even when they’re off duty. Having an effective social media policy not only insulates the company, to some degree, from blow-back, it also gives them grounds for dismissing employees who cause the company problems (including bad publicity) due to their own social media contributions.

Walking the Tightrope

Unfortunately, there’s an up and a down side to creating an explicit social media policy. When used wisely, employee’s social media contributions can actually do a lot of good for businesses. However, the situations we hear about in the media almost exclusively focus on social media gone wrong rather than all the wonderful ways it can be used for the greater good. In other words, the policy is needed, but you should make an effort to not make your social media policies stifling. Social networks, after all, are places where the average person turns to let his or her hair down and unwind.

Get Employee Input When Creating the Policy

Your employees are the perfect source for information about the specifics you should put into place in your company’s social media policy. Find the employees that have the most active social media lifestyles and bring them in to serve as consultants for the policy. This also helps all staff members understand that they aren’t being singled out by management with the social media policy.

Focus on Positive Language

Any policy is easier to take when it’s phrased in a positive way. Focus on what they can do and what you encourage them to do in their social media activities. Request that employees include disclaimers and provide full disclosure that they are, in fact, employed by your company, when they post. Also ask them to let their circle of friends know that they are stating their own opinions and that those opinions do not represent the thoughts or opinions of the company.

Social media policies are, first and foremost, about protecting the image of the company. While it takes all kinds of brilliant minds attached to varying opinions to make your company tick, these diverse thoughts and opinions can cause public relations nightmares for the company without a social media policy in place to harness them. Be fair. Be appropriate. And, be consistent in your enforcement of these social media policies.

Learn more about HR policies and management concepts by talking with the experts at Davis Staffing today!

Social media is all the rage these days – for many reasons. Businesses, of all shapes and sizes, need to incorporate social media into their business plans. With that in mind, however, there are certain things you should and should not do with your social media efforts. This is especially true if you plan to use social media as a means to reach out to new and highly qualified candidates for jobs you have available. Here are a few things you should consider when using social media if you want to appeal to a wider audience of potential employees.

What Candidates Wished Employers Posted on Social Media Pages

MiracleWorkers.com conducted a survey of healthcare workers which revealed that 40 percent of workers in the healthcare industry wished companies would post job listings on company pages. They’d also like to see more information about various career paths in their organizations posted on these pages.

WorkInRetail.com conducted a similar survey of retail employees and discovered they would like to similar information on job openings. But they had an additional request. 18 percent of retail employees responding to the survey also want organizations to list something fun about working for them as well as employee testimonials.

IT employees, according to Sologig.com are also looking to learn something fun about working for the company and hearing employee testimonials. 39 percent of workers in the IT industry are also interested in seeing job listings go social by appearing on company’s social media pages. They also want to know what types of products and/or services the company is working on too.

What Companies Should Not Do with their Social Media Efforts

There were several things that workers across the board (in all the industries surveyed above) agree companies should not do. Companies should not be sporadic in their social media updates. Businesses should not fail to respond to questions that are asked of them. They should also avoid company communications that read like advertisements.

The filtering of comments was another thing that really bothered job seekers in these industries. People would much rather hear the good, the bad, and the ugly about a company before deciding if they can live with the perceived negatives.

More importantly, they want to see how the company responds to the negative. An aggressive campaign to respond in a positive manner to the perceived negatives shows that the company is interested in resolving the situation while filtering the content or removing the comments completely will make it look like the company is more interested in pretending it never happened than solving the problem.

Social media can be a real boon for businesses today – especially when it comes to attracting the ideal candidate. But using social media for recruitment requires consistent work and a consistent message to really attract the best of the best job candidates. Be prepared to make social media a key player in your company’s plan for recruiting today and in the future.

Social media is on the rise in businesses today…for companies both large and small. In fact, if you want to compete, whether on a local or global scale, you almost have to embrace social media marketing in order to solidify your brand as a business and as an employer. Of course for most businesses, large and small, getting started with social media is the hardest part – especially when it comes to shape the perception of your business organization as one that is an attractive employer for 2012 and beyond.

Find Out What People are Saying about Your Business

Before you can get a conversation started with potential employees about the benefits of working for your organization, you need to know what others have to say about your business and how you conduct your business. Fortunately for you there are several social media tools in place that help you do that already. One of these resources, Glassdoor.com, deals specifically with what former employees are saying about your business. Google Alerts is another great way to gauge what people have to say.

Come up with a Solid Plan of Action

You have a plan for almost every aspect of how you operate your business. Your social media campaign should be no different. It’s important to have clearly defined objectives and a step by step plan of action to help you achieve those objectives.

When you’re trying to attract employees to your business that represent the cream of the crop, your mission needs to be to come up with a social media strategy that makes your company stand out as an employer. You want to play up the benefits of working for your organization. Do you have a relaxed corporate culture? Do you promote personal as well as professional development in your organization? What is it about your company that potential employees will find attractive?

Finally you need to have a plan for the specific social networks you intend to utilize as part of your strategy. There are many social networks out there at the moment and new networks are cropping up every day. Some of the most widely used for business purposes at the moment include: YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. These are the bare minimum you’ll want to utilize as part of your overall social media marketing strategy to attract new employees to your company.

Using Social Media Wisely

There are right and wrong ways to use social media when you’re trying to project an image of a professional environment that will attract modern workers with modern attitudes about work and which work environments are most positive.

Some of the tools you might use to show the world what life is like as an employee in your organization include videos, photographs, and tweets about events, awards, etc. that are happening for your employees. Things like company picnics, family days at the office, bring your pet to work day, birthday parties, awards ceremonies, etc. are ideal photo and video opportunities to show just how well you treat the people who make your business the success it is.