Pennie Saum is a Process Improvement Program Manager at the Port of Seattle with over 20 years of experience in lean and is a certified Six Sigma Black Belt. She focuses on combining process improvement and people development to meet people where they are at. This helps them pull process improvement instead of pushing it […]
Lynne Smith, former Director of Business Design at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, discusses the potential and difficulties of applying Lean Thinking to NGOs, and how it can be used to scale impact. She reflects back on the lean transformation at the Gates Foundation with an interview with Steve Bell and Roberto Priolo, and […]
Written by Brion
The IISE Annual Conference Volunteering Event is a yearly project started in 2012 where members attending the annual conference volunteer to assist a nonprofit agency in the conference’s host city. The 2022 event took place May 21st at the Southcenter Store of the Habitat for Humanity of Seattle-King County in Tukwila, Washington. 23 volunteers offered their time […]
Written by Brion
Ann Moses of King County government (in Seattle) talks about a unique lean Green Belt program that integrates Racial Equity and Social Justice. As one of her IT Department’s lead racial equity trainers, when Ann received her lean Black Belt she saw a deep alignment and affinity between lean values and racially equity and social […]
Written by Brion
New projects for King County mean new grants and new cost centers. But setting up cost centers was taking too long and nothing could proceed without the new cost center. There were customers waiting over 30 days—and some 80 days—to have their forms processed. Megan Rulien, an Administrator at King County Finance and Business Operations […]
Written by Brion
Bill Wilbert has worked for the King County Wastewater Treatment Division for 17 years. He’s an Environmental Programs Supervisor for the division and manages the permitting and regulatory compliance workforce. Sandy Kilroy was the Assistant Director for the King County Wastewater Treatment Division. She’s been with Wastewater for a little over 5 years but within […]
Written by Brion
by Brion Hurley Brent Weichers is the Director of Continuous Improvement at The Lighthouse for the Blind. Based out of Seattle, Washington, they are a not-for-profit Aerospace and Military Supply manufacturing company. The Lighthouse employs over 260 individuals who are blind, DeafBlind or blind with other disabilities. When he started the job and started to […]
Written by Brion
The true power of continuous improvement lies in its ability to help people reach their full potential. In this course, we visit The Lighthouse for the Blind, an extraordinary organization that provides employment opportunities for individuals who are blind, deaf, DeafBlind, and/or have other disabilities. With prestigious clients like Boeing, NASA, and the United States […]
Written by Brion
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 […]
Written by Brion
King County Wastewater Treatment Division successfully improves the Capital Design process featuring Roger Browne, an Engineering Supervisor. Roger realized that since the Wastewater Treatment Division was short on staff, they had to find a way to reduce the time it took to deliver capital improvement projects in order to free up resources to get more […]
Written by Brion