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After having successfully implemented lean manufacturing in the 1990ies and lean engineering since 2004, Tenneco Europe decided to expand Lean to their administrative organizations in October 2009. The implementation approach was directly derived from lean engineering [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6]. After having defined a vision and a road map, a lean steering committee, composed of senior managers and a lean coordinator, identified and supported the first areas for implementation of lean in their transactional processes. It was decided to challenge the organization by selecting some critical cross functional processes.

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.

[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12] This paper describes the implementation of lean in the Human Resources department at Tenneco Europe. In the past, the implementation of lean transactional was mainly focused on Sales & Engineering and Finance. Our experience shows that the lean approach can be applied in a similar way as in Finance or Sales & Engineering. This paper illustrates some examples of critical processes related to Human Resources which have been improved. These include the “on-board” or integration process the management of employee flextime accounts process to create and manage a resignation certificate absenteeism reduction in one Tenneco plant For these three last processes, the key workshop deliverables are: project charter.

The lean implementation method is crucial for successful results. Tenneco's early lean experience showed that project execution took too much time, resulting in the risk of de-motivating people and reducing the credibility of the company's lean strategy. An experienced team from finance and sales & engineering worked to understand the root causes and find a new way of: identifying preparing executing tracking and closing the lean projects. This paper describes the lessons learned and how Tenneco improved its lean methodology.

Tenneco first implemented the lean transactional process ten years ago. One of the key success factors was to ensure that the lean system was sustained within an organization as part of a philosophy of continuous improvement. This has probably been the most challenging part of implementing lean in Tenneco. During the early years of implementation, lean was managed as a top down approach which consisted of: identifying executing and tracking lean projects by the management, a small number of additional people and lean experts. This approach had the advantage of building up critical mass and helped to instill a lean change culture in a reasonable timeframe. But the Tenneco experience showed that even if early results were encouraging, the implementation was not consistent enough to sustain a mindset of continuous improvement. This top down approach needed to be reinforced by a much stronger bottom up approach which consisted of group leaders acting as change agents.