LA County Reduces Lead Time For Completing Technical Service Requests By 98% With GLSS
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Find out how Abigail Calderon and Jennifer Storm from LA County streamlined IT tickets by eliminating unnecessary signatures and process steps by checking out our latest success story. Government Agencies are using Lean Six Sigma to improve processes. The outcome? Better service to internal and external customers.
Abigail Calderon is the Administrative Assistant and Lean Six Sigma Consultant for the Administrative Bureau of the LA County Clerkâs office. Jennifer Storm works in the Budget Section of the office. One day, Abigail was filling out a form called a Technical Service Request, when she had a realization: the process required her to complete the form twiceâonce on paper and another electronically! After identifying this rework, her Lean Six Sigma instincts kicked in and she decided to take on improving this process alongside Jennifer, who was also motivated to improve the process.
THE CHALLENGE
While this form was used by all departments at the County Clerk office, the IT department owned responsibility for the form. Because the form required numerous signatures, Abigail and Jennifer knew they needed to generate buy-in from their process stakeholders. They decided to bring this issue to the IT team, and they found that this process was just as painful for them.
Even though the form was only one page, it took 43 days to gather all necessary signatures and get the request approved. However, this is only to get a purchase request approved. Their request still needed to be submitted electronically to actually order their desired item.
THE DISCOVERY
After creating a Swimlane Map and measuring the process, Abigail and Jennifer found that it only took roughly 4 hours to have all necessary parties review the form. The other 42 days were all waiting time!
THE IMPROVEMENTS
They developed a 2-fold solution to fix this process. First, they eliminated the form for the IT department altogether. The IT department already submits an electronic request and their managers are approving those internally, so this form was completely unnecessary for them. Second, they implemented a Cost Threshold Alignment for all other bureaus in the office. This allowed them to reduce the number of signatures needed on the form, from 10 to between 2 and 5 depending on the cost of the item ordered.
THE RESULTS
- The IT Departmentâs Technical Service Request process was reduced from 15 to 2 steps and could be completed within 1 day (versus 43 days)
- For all other Bureaus, their Technical Service Request process was reduced from 15 to between 5 and 8 steps, and it could be completed in only 8 days instead of the original 43 days
- The IT Departmentâs requests made up 70% of the total requests submitted, so they eliminated 70% of the paper traffic involved with these requests

In the end, Abigail and Jennifer were able to streamline a painful process for the entire office and made it easier for everyone to submit a Technical Service Request. However, their work is not done yet, as they hope to tackle the second part of this process: the actual ordering of items.
We asked Abigail and Jennifer what their favorite part of this project was, and Jennifer told us, âI have a personal contact [in the IT Department] now that I work with and they are great, and itâs somebody I wouldnât have …worked if it wasnât for this project.â For Abigail, her favorite part was that they were able to see this project through to completion by relying on their Lean skills and pushing through the standstill moments.
Excellent takeaways, Jennifer and Abigail! Weâre excited to see how this dynamic duo continues to improve their office processes to make the work life of their teams even easier!