The State of Connecticut Department of Administrative Services (DAS) established a lean facilitator role to help expand the use of Lean in their organization to better serve other agencies and taxpayers. Jason Crisco describes the steering committee (DAS Lean Council) they set up, and some of the projects and events they have worked on in […]
The Department of Administrative Services is responsible for setting policy for statewide travel across all agencies, and they needed to have processes that were updated to the 21st century, as many were outdated and burdensome. There was resistance to spending an entire week in a lean event, especially when dealing with staff shortages. However, they […]
The Procurement office within the Department of Administrative Services in the State of Connecticut actually began its improvement journey in the late 1990’s with a paperless effort. In 2013, IT procurement was taking too long and with a recent merger, a lean event was coordinated. They had lots of success in the first official event, […]
Commissioner Melody Currey explains the functions of the Department of Administrative Services, and how they started their lean journey. Her previous experience at the Department of Transportation (DOT) was valuable to selling the program to the staff. She shares how it brings people together to understand how their whole process works, and how they can […]
Adrienne Allen and Elizabeth Rivera share their thoughts about a kaizen event they participated in with the Department of Corrections. When inmates are incarcerated, their personal property is collected and stored at each facility. Each facility works under the same policies, but implement it in different ways. They were looking to streamline the process using […]
The department was looking to reduce their expenditures through efficiency. They performed a week-long kaizen event using the current state value stream map format. They also found that they build stronger relationships with other participants in the event. You can hear more about the lean event by watching the video called “DOC Spending Money Right” […]
The Department of Corrections (DOC) wanted to streamline the parole release process and documentation packages. They had to coordinate between correctional facilities, treatment, custody, case workers, and office staff to improve consistency in the release process across facilities. Depending on which facility they were in and who the warden was, their ability to get released […]
In 2014, the governor notified all agencies that he wanted to implement Lean at the State of Connecticut. Cheryl Cepelak had done some process improvement and organizational development work in the Department of Labor, and wanted to launch a similar campaign within the Department of Corrections (DOC). To help with the effort, they assigned Michael […]
Dorian Long shares her first exposure with Lean when she participated in a Lean kaizen event working to streamline the Medicare Waiver program. She enjoyed visualizing the process maps to expose the waste, and how the event increased employee engagement for the social workers. She also saw commonality with Lean and how they perform social […]
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 […]