King County Improves Veteran Supplier Record Setup by 56%, Featuring Jim Shoemaker

Jim Shoemaker is streamlining a process to help King County landlords register as suppliers to veterans. The process required veterans to fill out 18 pages of documentation to verify landlords. Then staff had to process those 18 pages, if there was any missing information, it resulted in multiple delays.

A “Virtual” walk exercise revealed they were all accessing and processing the same information. They also realized the Field Offices were generating an additional 15 to 20 pages of supporting documentation—that no one else ever saw.

Some simple but high-impact improvements were made after the exercise:

• Removed the time-consuming verification research
• Dropped the required documentation from 18 pages down to 2 pages
• Updated the new Standard Work for all the groups
• Reduced redundant steps in similar supplier-setup processes within the county

After implementing improvements, they had saved 550 hours of wasted productivity for the Field Analyst Team alone. The time to process went from 3.4 hours per record down to 1.5 hours—a 56% improvement. The setup time was reduced by two hours per service request for over 220 service requests per year.

Watch the 20 minute video above, or read the transcript at https://goleansixsigma.com/success-story-lean-six-sigma-makes-easier-veterans-suppliers-government/