Finding and reducing waste in service processes may be more difficult than in manufacturing operations, but it is definitely possible and potentially very rewarding. Lean thinking has been applied to the legal profession, healthcare services, accounting, software development, and more. So let's consider the following scenario:

Assume

You are in the accounting (specifically Accounts Payable) department of your firm. You handle approving payments made to vendors.

Your standard process assumes that internally your operations department has requested and approved permission to order some specific product or service at a certain price in a certain quantity.

Your procurement department found an approved vendor to provide that product or service as specified.

Your internal document trail has:

The original request with authorizations

The executive management approval

The procurement approval and selected vendor

The purchase order number for the contract / purchase agreement with the vendor

The vendor's acceptance of the order

The vendor has documents proving the manufacture and shipment of your order

The shipping firm (if not their own) has documents for the receipt of the product from the vendor and transportation to your facility

Your receiving dock has documents noting the date, time, quantity, and acceptable quality of the product being received

You have access to all of your internal documentation

Determine whether you would or would not support working with the vendor to develop a process so that (1) they would not have to generate invoices and (2) you would not need to process their invoices - but you would pay them upon receipt of the material or service.

If implemented, both parties save significant time in their accounting departments. Do not document this new process in detail - discuss why you would not support it or why you would. You do not need to have references, but you can if they help the reader