How to pull in the office

A push system is where each step or in a process works as hard as possible and pushes all the work it completes to the next step. This means that work-in-progress will sit between steps gathering dust and lengthening end-to-end time. It also means that any improvement feedback loops will be ineffective. If work is flowing quickly through a system, any errors that creep in can be quickly spotted by the downstream processes and the source of the error fixed before they produce too much more. If work is sitting between stations for hours or days, it might be days or weeks before errors are spotted and in the meantime that same error might have been repeated many times in the work that is sat around.

So we want to aim for flow and pull. Flow means that the work does not stop anywhere but keeps moving along. Pull is the compromise where flow is not possible. It is when the upstream step does not do anything until the next step is free to work on it. This is sometimes done with kanban, but can equally be achieved with a space on a desk that may only contain one piece of work.

In an office you have to be pretty innovative about pull signals. There is no one technique that will work everywhere. But always try to make whatever you do visual, physical or both. Don't hide flow or pull signals away in computers if at all possible. The above example of the space on the desk is both physical (if a piece of work occupies the space, then the upstream process does nothing), and visual (the upstream worker only need to glance over at the desk to see what the status is). Keeping it simple and not jumping to the conclusion that technology is the way to improve everything is a very powerful lesson to promote pull.