Transactional Process Improvement (TPI)

Identify and remove waste in an office or knowledge-work process, using the same lean fundamentals a shop-floor kaizen event runs -- charter the initiative, follow a real case through the process with a Makigami process map to see who does each step, what it touches and where it waits or comes back, tag the real waste by category, check the numbers for the whole flow with a value stream map when the problem spans several processes, root-cause the specific bottleneck, plan the fix, and confirm it holds weeks later.

7 katas, in the order they are used. Each is free, open-licensed, and comes with a companion guide.

1. Step 1

   Kaizen events

   Kaizen event charter

   The opportunity, the objective, who's on the team, and whether you're actually ready to start — one document, not three you'd have to keep in sync, with a readiness checklist you check off before the event begins.

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2. Step 2

   Value stream mapping

   Makigami process map

   Zoom into one office or service process to see why it's slow or error-prone: follow a real case through every person, handoff, document and system, with lead time, handoffs, re-keying and first-pass yield computed. Use it when a value stream map points at a problem process, or for any process full of approvals and rework.

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3. Step 3

   Foundations

   Eight wastes (DOWNTIME) worksheet

   A structured waste walk against the eight DOWNTIME categories — Defects, Overproduction, Waiting, Non-utilized talent, Transportation, Inventory, Motion, Extra-processing — tallied by category so the vital few show up, with any category nobody actually looked for named honestly.

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4. Step 4

   Value stream mapping

   Value stream map — current and future state

   See where a whole value stream is choked, from customer request to delivery across departments: the map is drawn from what you measured, with lead time, flow efficiency, takt and the real constraint computed, and a future state to compare. Start here for the big picture; zoom into one problem process with a Makigami.

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5. Step 5

   Problem solving / root cause analysis

   A3 problem solving

   Structured problem solving on one page: background, a Pareto-driven root cause chain, and a tested countermeasure tracked against a target, actual, gap and standard (TAGS) scorecard.

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6. Step 6

   Kaizen events

   Implementation plan

   Milestones toward a real completion date, each owned by your own team, an outside party, or both — with days remaining, overdue and unowned milestones, and a mutuality check computed, not asserted: a plan where every milestone belongs to your own side isn't actually cross-functional.

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7. Step 7

   Kaizen events

   Sustainment audit

   Whether a kaizen event's commitments actually held after it closed — a checklist against the specific practices it was supposed to leave behind, honestly naming which are at risk of lapsing.

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