The James P. Womack Scholarship and Philanthropy Fund (JPW Fund) and the California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) teamed up with the primary goal to have two student interns analyze and improve core processes at a nonprofit organization, thus inspiring the organization to implement lean practices by showing them various methods to improve their operations. […]
When the Covid-19 pandemic began, the Excise and Licenses (EXL) department of the City and County of Denver was hard at work identifying what they needed to innovate to adapt to the current circumstances. They had a Rapid Improvement Event focused on streamlining and reorganizing their EXL Shared Drive. The Action Plan The Rapid Improvement […]
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 […]
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What are some useful tools for process improvement experts amidst the COVID19-induced chaos, that also continues to inspire the “collective innovative spirit.” Katie from the City of Denver’s Peak Academy has identified these 6 tools to help you in the virtual world: Brainstorming Voice of the Customer Process Mapping Visual Management Nudges & Social Engineering […]
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King County streamlines the travel expense process with Eunjoo Greenhouse, the Deputy Director of the Finance and Business Operations Division (FBOD). Valerie Ceban, a Budget Analyst for the Department of Information Technology, wanted to help too as she oversaw the lengthy travel approval process and wanted a good project to pursue her Green Belt Certification. Initial […]
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Brion Hurley gave a presentation on how to improve employee engagement through structured management systems from Lean. The talk was given at the Deconstruction and Reuse Conference (hosted by Build Reuse) in Pittsburgh, PA. He shared experiences working with reuse nonprofit organizations like ReStore and The Rebuilding Center. He gave recommendations to organizations on how […]
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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 […]
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by Brion Hurley When Joe Hnat was working for Collins Aerospace in Melbourne, FL, he had an idea to start a garden at his work place. Read about his story in which he shares the setbacks & challenges he encountered while trying to establish and maintain a non-profit corporate garden run by volunteers. He discusses how […]
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Alicia Saake of Feeding San Diego is a great organization applying process improvement to help people in need. After taking some Lean Six Sigma training, she has been helping the food bank run more efficiently. For example, she helped develop shadow boards for their tools, to reduce time for volunteers to find what they need. […]
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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 […]
Written by Brion