Ziqitza Health Care Limited, a social enterprise in India that provides ambulance services, aims to make those services accessible to all segments of society. But for the first 10 years of its history, Ziqitza lacked reliable data on who its customers were and on whether it was reaching the poorest people in its areas of […]
Toyota Motor Manufacturing West Virginia (TMMWV) shared their manufacturing know-how and expertise with the Facing Hunger Food Bank in Huntington, West Virginia. The multi-month project was a collaborative effort and now has the food bank poised to operate more efficiently. TMMWV team members helped the food bank’s backpack program increase its efficiency by 600 percent. […]
Written by Brion
“Industrial Engineer” Managing Editor Michael Hughes interviews the three co-directors of Georgia Tech’s Center for Health and Humanitarian Logistics, which was founded in 2007. In order of appearance: Julie Swann, Pinar Keskinocak and Özlem Ergun The center works to transform the humanitarian sector by applying industrial engineering tools to groups that respond to natural and man-made disasters. The center’s […]
Written by Brion
For years, the complex and costly nature of impact measurement has kept many social enterprises and nonprofits from doing it, or doing it well. Few investors or entrepreneurs seek to understand, in a deep way, how customers experience the goods or services that an enterprise provides, and therefore, there is little information on whether social […]
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Alex Ogunji is a Master Black Belt with the Los Angeles County Registrar Recorder Clerk. To address financial variances between two different payment systems, and to reduce the time to reconcile the variances, he organized a cross-functional team across the three bureaus to create a Swimlane Map which would capture the whole payment process end-to-end. The activity […]
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An employee at the Public Works Finance & Administration Department, was in charge of invoicing and processing payments for residents. This employee also had Black Belt training. They noticed when customers sent in checks to pay their bill, some of them arrived in envelopes that were not addressed to the right person or to any […]
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The Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) Commissioner Robert Klee sits down with Gemba Academy’s Ron Pereira to learn about the history of Lean in his organization, Over 80 week-long kaizen events have been completed, and over half of the staff have taken Lean training or been involved in a lean event, helping to build […]
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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. […]
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Ron Pereira of Gemba Academy participated in Connecticut’s statewide Lean Showcase for 2016, held at the Connecticut State Capitol. He met with several of Connecticut’s officials and other state employees to discuss their governmental Lean journey and recorded interviews and sessions about LeanCT improvement projects. Links below will go to a summary article about each […]
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Recruitment and selection are processes rife with potential for bias, both from the side of the recruiter and from the side of the applicant. The city of Chattanooga (Tennessee) worked with the Police Department and behavioral insight experts to attract more diverse applicants to the police force. By sending postcards to households across the city, […]
Written by Brion