There are approximately 250-500 refugees arriving in Mannheim, Germany per week, which is also approximately the speed at which the office can hand out papers. There was approximately a 5-week backlog of unregistered refugees, hence there was a need to improve capacity.

The actual asylum claim process has a much larger backlog of multiple months, but this team of three professors and a few volunteers focused on the ID substitute process, and started a small initiative, Lean for Refugees.

They spent almost three days in the LEA Mannheim (Landeserstaufnahmeeinrichtung, State Office for initial registration). This is one of the state of Baden-Württemberg offices that gives refugees their initial registration papers called BüMa (Bescheinigung über die Meldung als Asylsuchender, Confirmation of Registration as Asylum claimant).

These are sort of a ID substitute for refugees. With those, the refugees are entitled to benefits and they can apply for asylum, which is a separate process.

They conducted a current and future state map of the process, and developed a list of opportunities for improvement. They estimated that they could achieve a 50% reduction in processing and throughput time.

Read the whole article at https://www.allaboutlean.com/lean-for-refugees/