Implementation of Lean Transactional at Tenneco Europe, Applications in Finance

After having successfully implemented lean manufacturing in the 1990ies and lean engineering since 2004, Tenneco Europe expanded lean to its administrative organizations in October 2009. The implementation approach was directly derived from lean engineering previously implemented in Tenneco Europe as this was considered closer to administration processes than manufacturing processes were.

A first SAE paper on lean transactional was presented in 2011. This paper covered a vision, a road map and a process to roll out the lean Spirit in the Administrative world. This paper and the papers listed in the reference list provide in detail the lean tools and principles used in lean transactional and engineering. This new paper is focussed on some concrete applications where the lean mindset has been implemented mainly by the finance team supported by sales, project management, marketing, manufacturing and engineering.

After more than two years of implementation, the results are very encouraging

• significant reduction of cross-functional process lead times by 20% to over 80%.
• freed-up time (less effort) due to waste elimination. Redeployment of the freed-up time to high value added tasks.
• improved quality and accuracy of data reports
• ‘soft-side’ improvements such as:
  • improved communication and alignment between departments
  • employees have a better understanding of how their work contributes to the overall value stream to their customers
  • improved cross-functional team building through activities during the lean training and workshops
  • developing a more consistent problem-solving mindset (seeing waste, finding root causes, continuous improvement)
  • significant improvement in motivation and morale
  • a belief by the employees that they are in control of the processes they contribute to and not just victims of them
  • overcoming the employee view that the processes that can be changed are only the ones or part of ones under the direct control of the department to which they are attached, rather than any and the complete process in which they have a stake.