Their history of Lean in this department went back to Total Quality Management (TQM) in the 1990’s, where they started to map out processes to identify improvement ideas. However, what was missing from TQM was the leadership commitment and employee involvement in the improvement work.
There was a $7B deficit that drove the need to make changes to the state agencies, but with the challenge to still provide quality services to residents. The Lean initiative was launched around 2011, and they quickly decided to hire a Lean coordinator to help spread Lean across the agencies.
One of the changes was to use Lean to streamline a process before implementing any technology upgrades or automation in their processes.
With many labor unions in the state, they’ve also found that Lean has helped bring workers and management together more effectively, where management can provide direction and some control, but workers can take ownership of how the work is done. This has also led to increased morale for those participating in kaizen events.
They’ve also found that Lean helps improve the culture and morale, helps departments work better with each other in a more respectful and collaborative way.
You can watch the video “Office of Policy and Management Secretary and Deputy Secretary” at https://www.gembaacademy.com/guests/state-of-connecticut