Open Access

The purpose of this bachelor thesis is to provide an overview on the development, acceptance and the current status quo in the application of the concept of Lean Administration in Germany. In this context, based on an extensive literary and quantitative research, the Japanese concept of Lean Management, its history, principles, related approaches and the according criticisms will be explained. Of particular importance is hereby the concept of Lean Administration, which is intended to transfer the Lean Principles from the direct business divisions to the indirect business divisions of a company. Through the execution of the literary research, it became apparent that the Lean Principles are already well established and acknowledged in many parts of the world. Particularly, manufacturing companies in Japan and Germany create their production systems in accordance to the Lean Approach. In addition to this, the principles of Lean Management are increasingly applied in indirect business areas, predominantly in Japan. But also in Germany, the awareness of the principle of Lean Administration is increasing, although the implementation of the Lean Principles in administrative areas in German companies still appears to be very restrained.
 In order to investigate this circumstance in more detail, a quantitative study was subsequently conducted on the topic of "Lean Administration in Germany: Demographic and cultural factors impacting the success of the implementation of the concept“. Therefore, various factors that could have an influence on the acceptance towards the concept of Lean Administration were examined. Particular weight was given to the analysis of the cohesion between age and the level of professional experience of the respective subjects, and the openness towards the application of the concept of Lean Administration. Contrary to the initial hypothesis that both, a young age and a low level of professional experience would have a positive impact on the acceptance towards Lean Administration, the main finding of the statistical analysis is that there is no identifiable relationship between the three variables. 
 Nevertheless, even though no statistical evidence could be found for the initial hypothesis, the following significant findings could be identified. Accordingly, it seems that particularly subconscious factors have an influence on the acceptance of the concept of Lean Administration in Germany. Due to the habits of common approaches for processing administrative tasks and the fear of uncertainty about Lean Administration in practice, employees often feel insecure or not sufficiently encouraged to try out a new concept in administration. In this context, this bachelor thesis represents an overview and a guideline - especially for managers, department heads and employees in human resources - on the approaches, which can be used to promote Lean Administration in an adequate environment for increasing the resource efficiency in indirect areas in the long term. Consequently, through a well-structured approach and the usage of visual graphics in an appealing design, this thesis explains, what is required to be considered or could be investigated in the future in order to sustainably establish the concept of Lean Administration in German companies.

Durch die zunehmende Intelligenz der Produkte und die Möglichkeiten der Vernetzung zu einem Internet-der-Dinge entstehen zusätzliche Potenziale durch die Verarbeitung von Daten und das Angebot von datenbasierten, smarten Services. In diesem Artikel wird ein Rahmen für die Gestaltung der Digitalen Transformation für Dienstleistungen anhand des Remote Services Continuums aufgezeigt, die digitale Wertschöpfungskette beschrieben und eine Roadmap zur Erschließung dieser Potenziale dargestellt.