An interview was conducted at the Jan 2021 Happy Hour with Lean Portland. They invited John Ashcraft from Free Geek to discuss their Lean journey to increase their impact on the local Portland community. Their journey started in 2017, and at the end of 2020, they have almost tripled their output of refurbished laptops.
Lean consultant Christopher Chapman shares some inspiring words for 2021. He asks us to “reflect on lessons learned, in true kaizen fashion, and consider the most impactful problems to tackle in 2021.” He points to President-elect Joe Biden’s top priorities for his administration for guidance on where to prioritize our efforts in 2021: Control the […]
Written by Brion
An NHS Foundation Trust wanted to make improvements to the physical infrastructure and the water management processes as the department struggled with issues such as: unclear processes, lack of data and not being able to deliver in a timely manner. A centralized asset list was created and Weekly Water Hygiene Meetings were used to communicate […]
Written by Brion
Where does your old computer and laptop go when you are done with it? Most e-waste is not recycled to reclaim its precious metal components, and it ends up in in landfills. Not a very lean process! That’s where organizations like Free Geek come in. They are a nonprofit organization in Portland (Oregon) that collects […]
Written by Brion
The Oregon City Farmers Market reached out to Lean Portland for suggestions on how to offer their year-round market during a pandemic. As Lean Portland has experienced with other nonprofits, their goal is to remove waste and inefficiency in the process unrelated to building relationships, so that more time can be spent in conversation between volunteers, staff and […]
Written by Brion
Approving a commodity – a plant or plant products – for entry into the US requires identification of exotic pests associated with it in its country of origin, analysis of those pests and a mitigation plan to control them as the commodity moves along its path to the consumer. To safeguard US agriculture and natural […]
Written by Brion
Bill Wilbert has worked for the King County Wastewater Treatment Division for 17 years. He’s an Environmental Programs Supervisor for the division and manages the permitting and regulatory compliance workforce. Sandy Kilroy was the Assistant Director for the King County Wastewater Treatment Division. She’s been with Wastewater for a little over 5 years but within […]
Written by Brion
King County Wastewater Treatment Division successfully improves the Capital Design process featuring Roger Browne, an Engineering Supervisor. Roger realized that since the Wastewater Treatment Division was short on staff, they had to find a way to reduce the time it took to deliver capital improvement projects in order to free up resources to get more […]
Written by Brion
Kara Cuzzetto is a Lean Specialist at King County and previously worked in Healthcare where she became Lean certified. The Wastewater Division process for Procurement Contracts took over 300 days to complete and team members didn’t fully understand the entire process. The team performed a Gemba Walk, created a Process Map which allowed them to understand the whole […]
Written by Brion
There was a long lead-time to issue reimbursement checks to customers assisting with the Petroleum Cleanup Fund (PCF) because of redundancies in the review and appeal process. Only 31% of claims were paid within 30 days of receipt. Innovation was needed to provide more time for staff to address reimbursement activity and money owed to the […]
Written by Brion