King County Reduces Fund Request Lead Time By 64% With GLSS
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Washington
Government
Finance
64%
At the time of this project, Chris Franco was a Lean Six Sigma Green Belt, Army Veteran and Special Projects Coordinator at King County in the state of Washington.
His team at King County decided it was time to focus on improving a painful process for the customer: the Special District Fund Request Process. It was a great opportunity for improvement!
THE CHALLENGE
Chrisâs challenge as the Project Leader was to reduce the Lead Time for their Special District Fund Request Process, a process that was taking longer than it should.
With his team skeptical about what changes to make in the process, Chris had some barriers to overcome.
To meet this challenge head-on, Chris and his team conducted a Process Walk. First, the team attended a Process Walk Orientation to ensure everyone had a clear understanding of the purpose of a Process Walk, then Chris created a SIPOC map of the as-is process to help plan the interviews for the Process Walk.
One of the ground rules for conducting a Process Walk is to focus on the process rather than the people working in it. This helped team members feel safe from blame. People working in the process are usually the biggest victims of poor process design, yet we blame them! Chris emphasized to the team that nobody would be blamed for how the process was designed today. Sharing this perspective helped Chris generate buy-in from his team and move past barriers.
In the end, completing the Process Walk only took two days and allowed the team to gain profound knowledge of the end-to-end process.
THE DISCOVERY
The team made some critical discoveries during their process walk:
- 9 step total in the process
- 50% of the time, the process was taking 8 day to complete
- The whole process only equates to two hours of actual work known as Process Time or âTouch Timeâ
- Under ideal conditions, the cycle time could be as short as 22 hours!
- No current customer target for process time
- Process completion time varied greatly, anywhere from 3 to 35 days or more
Their process was packed full of unnecessary reviews, and they found the biggest waste within their process was simply waiting!
THE IMPROVEMENTS
Chris and his team were ultimately able to eliminate 5 steps within the process (55% reduction), the county saved $150 per Special District Fund Request, and no requests went over their new Lead Time target of 3 days!
The entire project only took them 2 days to complete, and the team had some valuable takeaways from their efforts:
- Process improvement is about the process â not people â so the team learned to let go of their fear for scrutiny
- Communication, collaboration, and their available Lean tools are powerful devices for achieving great results
- Process improvement can make life easier for everybody involved
- The team learned how to shape a process with their customers in mind
Since conducting this Process Walk, the team has completed 2 more and have scheduled a few more Process Walks to keep the momentum going and achieve their goal: to be the best run government in the nation.
Chris and his team are well on their way to achieving that goal. With several walks down, and more to come, weâre excited to see just how Lean processes can become at King County!