Lean in the Office.
The Same Rigour, Beyond the Factory Floor.
Every planning gap, every undocumented procedure, every capacity guess in your indirect teams becomes a delay, a defect, or an extra cost on the production floor. Indirect inefficiency doesn't stay in the back office — it shows up in your Speed, Quality, and Delivery numbers.
A 6-module methodology · Applied to any operational area · The same framework that works on the shop floor
What unstructured indirect operations look like
Most organisations have invested in operational excellence on the shop floor. The indirect areas — Planning, HR, Finance, Logistics — are still running on habits and spreadsheets.
Unstructured indirect processes don't stay in the back office — they add cost to your operations through:
Speed
Late inputs from planning and logistics delay production start and response time.
Quality
Undocumented procedures in HR and supply chain create variation that ends up as defects.
Delivery
Capacity planned by gut feeling means missed dates begin long before the shop floor.
Processes live in email chains and spreadsheets
No standard process, no version control, no single source of truth. The planning document is in someone's inbox and the latest version is on a USB stick.
Results depend on who is working today
No standard work means no predictable output. When the best person is on holiday, performance drops. When they leave, knowledge walks out with them.
Workload imbalances nobody sees
Some people are overwhelmed, others underutilised — but there is no data to prove it. Capacity planning happens by gut feeling, not by measurement.
No visibility, no improvement
Without measured performance, every team meeting is an opinion contest. Problems get discussed, rarely resolved. The same issues appear in every monthly review.
Six modules. One direction: operational control.
The same structured approach used in production — adapted and validated for indirect operations. Select any module to see what it delivers.
Focus the Operation
Understand what your customer wants and where performance stands
What we do
Before optimising anything, you need to know what you are optimising for. This module maps the process at a high level, defines the customer and their requirements, and establishes the baseline metrics that will measure all future improvement.
Methods & tools
What changes
- Clear picture of who the customer is and what they value
- Performance measured against customer requirements
- Key inputs identified — the ones with the largest impact on outputs
Without this module
- Improvement efforts target the wrong activities — nobody agreed on what matters
- No baseline exists, so nobody knows if things are getting better or worse
- Each manager has a different definition of 'good performance'
Every operation. Not just the production line.
The Process Excellence framework applies wherever work is done in repeatable flows. These are the indirect areas where we most commonly see unstructured operations.
Planning & Scheduling
“Capacity managed by gut feeling. No standard for how demand translates into workload.”
Logistics & Supply Chain
“Supplier communication runs on email threads. No visual standard for escalation or response time.”
HR & People Operations
“Skill matrix exists in someone's spreadsheet. Training follow-through is tracked by nobody.”
Customer Service
“Response time varies by who picks up the ticket. No standard work, no first-pass-yield measure.”
Finance & Controlling
“Month-end close depends on tribal knowledge. Same corrections made every cycle.”
Procurement
“No visibility on supplier performance over time. Decisions made on last impression, not data.”
Connected to ECO Platform
Some modules have a digital layer already built.
Skill matrices and polyvalence are covered by the PMS module. 5S audits are managed in QMS. As ECO grows, more indirect process tools will have a digital counterpart — eliminating the spreadsheet layer entirely.
Ready to bring structure to your indirect operations?
Book the free 30-minute diagnostic. We will map your situation and tell you honestly which module to start with — and what results to expect.