Office and Service Productivity

Working Method Design for Increasing Office and Service Productivity

IMPROVING PRODUCTIVITY more than 200% without INVESTMENT, with Creative/ Innovative APPROACH.

The Japanese methodology for Managing Office Productivity (MOP) is a structured approach to detect and eliminate all losses that occur in the flow of an activity to ensure office/ white-collar productivity. First, MOP is the most effective and powerful way to deeply understand and document how you work and then innovatively improve office processes. It deeply captures all the sub-activities of a process. The analysis is performed to identify the basic functions (BF) and auxiliary functions (AF) of the activities and actions taken to reduce and eliminate losses. The MOP methodology ensures the best design of a future process based on losses elimination.

MOP is a simple but very effective tool, which has offered excellent competitive advantages through productivity for companies that have implemented the methodology in the administrative area processes.

The Current and Future Challenges (Opinions of Managers):

We are aware that we have high indirect costs in administrative areas.

Managers know that the levels of fixed and variable indirect costs are high and constantly increasing in the administrative areas, but they have no effective tool to increase White-Collar Work Productivity in order to reduce office costs.

Even if we implemented IT solutions in offices, there are still areas where work is duplicated, not fully covered, incomplete or speed is low.

Most of the time IT implementations are aimed at improving the quality of information and not the productivity of office activities. In many companies, many departmental or interdepartmental meetings are needed to discuss work productivity issues of people in offices and/ or problems generated by the implemented IT solutions. Often the solutions found are volatile because: (1) the content of office work is large, complex and not easily recognizable and (2) the standardization of office work is difficult due to the frequent change of the outputs needs.

The Concept of Managing Office Productivity (MOP) (by Dr. Shigeyasu SAKAMOTO)

Optimization of the required number of employees and the associated indirect costs in the office areas

Increasing the productivity of office work and the real reduction of indirect costs requires evaluating or reallocating the number of employees instead of time-based improvements. Often times-based improvements in office areas are unrealistic. To truly increase productivity in offices, a clear approach to inputs/ outputs is needed which will result in a reduction in the work content and a correct allocation of an adequate number of employees (input) and maintaining the preset output level.

The effectiveness of employees’ utilization in the office

Even if the employees’ resistance is high when it is necessary to increase the productivity in offices, often due to the confusion between productivity and rationalization, the innovative ideas generated by the MOP technique fully ensure the necessary results, measurable results, by using the industrial engineering techniques in the office areas. By using MOP, the time required to perform the tasks and the amount of human resources required are automatically reduced by eliminating unnecessary activities, regardless of the frequency of performing those activities. The indirect costs in the office areas are reduced this way.

The Basic Goals of MOP:

Knowing the real potential for productivity improvement in administrative areas;
Reducing the necessary number of people from administrative areas;
Increasing the speed of carrying out tasks without affecting the quality of work in offices;
Increasing the effectiveness of people’s work;
Increasing the capacity of office processes;
Reducing the number of documents used in office areas;
Reducing material consumption in office areas.

MOP Consulting: The Main Steps

So, MOP is an effective technique to get effective results. MOP is based on experiences in production areas with industrial engineering. There are three subjects in MOP regarding three dimensions of productivity: Method – M, Performance – P, and Utilization – U. They are called M-MOP, P-MOP, and U-MOP. These three dimensions multiply the results of productivity. Dimension M contributes to effectiveness. Dimension P contributes to efficiency. Dimension U cannot provide clear results without M and P. The synergy of the three dimensions results in improved productivity in office areas.

In order to increase the productivity in the administrative areas by using MOP, by designing a new working method for new processes, it is necessary to follow the following 6 steps: