What do lean management and outsourcing have in common?

Key information:

• Outsourcing is a management model that involves handing over parts of a company's operations to external partners, allowing the company to focus on key tasks.
• Lean management and outsourcing are intertwined, as outsourcing allows the elimination of redundant processes, which increases an organization's efficiency.
• Outsourcing can include various forms, such as task, personnel, asset, organizational and management, depending on the company's needs.
• Implementing outsourcing as part of lean management allows optimization of operations, but requires appropriate selection of partners and strategies depending on the company's specific operations.
• Successful use of outsourcing in lean management involves adherence to the principles of regularity and consistency, just as with diet and training at the gym.

Details below!

Outsourcing is a management model that bases its strength on collaboration. The name is a combination of three English words: "out" "resource" and "using," which means, translated into Polish, "using external resources." It is nothing more than the transfer of part of the burden that is placed on the enterprise for its operation to an external contractor. In basic terms, we distinguish between two types of this mode of management:

• outsourcing full - involves signing a contract with a partner for the comprehensive implementation of tasks facing the company,
• outsourcing selective - as the name suggests, we deal with it only when we select a single element of the company's business and put it under external contracting.

Outsourcing and the Polish enterprise

About the interest in the concept outsourcing in Polish organizations is evidenced by the results of a survey of the 250 largest companies. Based on it, it can be concluded that 94% large companies in Poland outsource at least one of their activities.

The areas most frequently mentioned are information technology (62%) and training and other forms of professional qualification (55%). Supply chain also scores high, especially since it is actually a concept not found in many service activities. Lower in popularity are finance and accounting (24%) and human resource management (19%).

Outsourcing - the miracle diet

In the first article, we likened lean management to trying to lose a few extra pounds and training at the gym. Its basic principles turned out to be regularity, consistency and control. Sticking to the analogy of a gym session, lean management to outsourcing is like weight loss to a proper diet. It is a tool that, in this way of management, allows us to discard what is unnecessary and focus on the efficient operation of the organism that is our company.

In other words, one of the basic concepts of lean management is outsourcing. It allows to realize the strategic goal of the company - to focus on the key activities of the company, determining the prospect of its development.

Match your diet to your expectations

Outsourcing in concept lean management gives the entrepreneur the freedom to choose the right partners and conditions, in order to develop the most effective strategy for the business. However, everyone has a different understanding of redundant processes in the company, not at all or slightly affecting the revenue of the entire enterprise. For this reason, we can distinguish outsourcing:

• task - involves the contracted partner sharing tasks that are related to the functions performed by the parent company,
• personal - is based on selecting employees, specialists in a particular field, and transferring them to other operating systems of the organization's structure,
• property - is contained in the separation or liquidation of assets redundant to the business of the enterprise, related to the separated function,
• organizational - presupposes the exclusion of the system of operation performing the separated function from the company,
• management - the most popular; it involves rebuilding the management system both in terms of legal issues and the sheer decision-making power of people in the company, which streamlines day-to-day operations.

No yo-yo effect

The above-mentioned elements of outsourcing must be taken into account each time you plan a venture to implement lean management principles.

Their size and importance should depend on:

• type of spin-off activity - wishing to use this method to solve personnel problems in the company, we will not give them the same importance as those concerning the company's financial problems,
• forms of separation - lean management has a different meaning, depending on whether we entrust part of the tasks, so far regularly performed by our employees, to another internal unit or an external company,

• linkage forces - if the activity covered by this method is strongly linked to many areas of the company's operations (for example, when we are talking about entrusting an external company with the compensation model and system), we will assign it a relatively higher rank than an attempt to develop a better organization in the HR department.

You know what to do, it's time to act!

Going back to the gym analogy, not enforcing the rules correctly can carry undesirable results. In that case, why tire yourself out while exercising without sticking to the other rules of weight loss, such as diet or regularity of the workout itself? Remember that in order for lean management to be successful, it must first of all be implemented according to specific principles, one of which is precisely the appropriate use of outsourcing.