Tehseen Lazzouni is a Lean Six Sigma Green Belt and Financial Analyst in the Chemistry & Biochemistry Department at UC San Diego, one of the world’s leading public research universities. Quarterly reports were taking Tehseen 16 days, a process seen as taking too long. She listened to her customers and completed a Voice of Customer […]
by Brion Hurley When Joe Hnat was working for Collins Aerospace in Melbourne, FL, he had an idea to start a garden at his work place. Read about his story in which he shares the setbacks & challenges he encountered while trying to establish and maintain a non-profit corporate garden run by volunteers. He discusses how […]
Written by Brion
Alicia Saake of Feeding San Diego is a great organization applying process improvement to help people in need. After taking some Lean Six Sigma training, she has been helping the food bank run more efficiently. For example, she helped develop shadow boards for their tools, to reduce time for volunteers to find what they need. […]
Written by Brion
Lean government. The very idea sounds implausible. Even to the seasoned Lean practitioner, the idea of a Lean government sounds far fetched. Governments are traditionally seen as the epitome of bureaucracy, and the guardians of red tape, incomprehensible forms and endless queues. But there are workable Lean strategies for governments seeking to reduce waste and […]
Written by Brion
The Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) oversees the underground storage tank (UST) of petroleum (typically managed by gas stations and trucking companies). Their goal is to prevent leaks from getting into the local groundwater and wells that are used as a drinking water source by 1/3 of the population in the state. […]
Written by Brion
Value-stream mapping is a critical step of any lean transformation. If it happens to be in the public sector, though, there are some significant hurdles to overcome. One of the most significant barriers is the difficulty of identifying the value in the public sector, which, if not properly done, can bring the entire mapping process […]
Written by Brion
Starting in 2012, the DOT has been investing in Lean training and events to improve their operations. As of 2016, they have over 700 staff trained in Lean Principles, and 7 staff trained in Advanced Lean Principles. They have conducted 22 full week kaizen events, and helped lead 5 statewide Lean events. Helped to breakdown […]
Written by Brion
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, […]
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A kaizen event was performed at the Elderbridge Agency on Aging. The goal of the event was to streamline the process to 90% accuracy within one year, and reduce duplication of client intake information by 50%. The team mapped the current state value stream map (VSM) of the process, then brainstormed all duplicate tasks. The team […]
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The objective of the Value Stream Mapping event for the Iowa DNR was to understand existing priorities, basic functions, associated partners and audiences for each of the river programs in the Department. They developed a transformation plan that included website updates, health alerts, modeling and flood recovery programs. Download the report out presentation at: https://dom.iowa.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2016/11/DNR-Iowa-River-Programs-Report-Out-2015-02-12.pdf
Written by Brion