Written by Laurie Ann Wagner from the Connecticut Department of Social Services helped start their lean project in 2012. She learned about Lean methods, but also noticed some similarities to previous improvement methods she was familiar with, so it came easy to her.
One of the first problems they tackled was realizing that forms were redundant across different agencies, and they conducted a lean event to create a universal application for community based services for those living with disabilities.
The ‘Leanopoly’ game (modeled after Monopoly) was developed to make learning about Lean more fun. Property cards were changed to project updates in the department, and utility squares were replaced with descriptions of infrastructure that was essential to support and maintain improvement efforts.
Hear her story about the history of Lean in their department by watching the video “Department of Social Services ‘Leanopoly’” at https://www.gembaacademy.com/guests/state-of-connecticut