UC San Diego Reduced Late Approvals By 64% With GLSS
A late event approval means campus planners are given short notice, crippling their ability to stage concerts, festivals or even simple barbecues. Last year 82% of the 300 food-only events at UC San Diego received a late final reviewâthatâs over three quarters missing the deadline!
THE CHALLENGE
On average, approvals were granted only 3 days before events instead of meeting the 7-day lead-time deadline. The resulting bottlenecks led to customer frustration. The Triton Activities Planner (TAP)âan online event planning applicationâmanages on-campus student organization events at the university. TAP notifies campus facilities and security of events and provides permitting if food is served.
Darlene Schlueter, an Associate Director for the Center for Student Involvement, works with student organizations and campus-wide events. Kymberly Epperson, an Event Services Coordinator, assists student organizations throughout the event planning process.
Darlene and Kymberlyâboth Lean Six Sigma Green Beltsâwere determined to streamline the food-event registration process to ensure campus compliance and food safety and to increase customer satisfaction. They formed a cross-functional team and launched a DMAIC project.
THE DISCOVERY
The team researched the user reports generated by TAP and learned that students considered the process complex and burdensome. The top complaint was having to go through far too many steps. The team raced to conduct a Process Walk, and were consequently amazed that event approval required 38 steps. Dining events and simple barbecues required the same number of steps as large-scale events, like concerts or festivals.
Once they created a Process Map, the work of each department became clear. Kymberly recalls, âI think the âahaâ was during the Process Walk, seeing what each department did and what could be eliminated to help everyone work together better.â
Cross Functional Team Understanding the Process
When they created a Fishbone Diagram and conducted Root Cause Analysis they were able to verify why students found event registration so cumbersome. They knew the improvements had to focus on reducing steps, simplifying the questionnaire and updating a frustrating interface.
Their Pareto Chart focused effort on food-only events. As Darlene put it, âIt was going to grow and get a lot of bang for the buck. And so thatâs why we focused on food-only events.â
THE IMPROVEMENTS
Darlene and Kimberly worked together with their team and came up with a solid list of targeted solutions:
- Created a âFastpass Trackâ for food-only events requiring only 7 steps
- Removed redundant web pages
- Established auto alerts to notify departments when a review is required
- Updated the login portal and the application design, making it more user-friendly
THE RESULTS
Once they put all of their countermeasures in place, they measured the impact.
- Reduced late approvals from 81.2% to 29%âa 64% improvement
- 4X more events met the 7-day lead-time deadline
- âFastpass Trackâ event approvals averaged 12-day lead timesâbeating the 7-day lead-time goal by almost double
- Reduced the number of process steps from 38 to 7
- Increased the percent of users who rated the registration process as âeasyâ or âsomewhat easyâ from 3.2% to 61%
While these results are impressive Kymberly noted, âOur most valuable soft savings for this project is having an effective and streamlined tool that campus administrators can rely on to better assess and mitigate risk factors.”
WHAT'S NEXT
64% improvement is impressive but the remaining 29% late means thereâs still opportunity and Darlene is excited about whatâs to come. âOh yeah, my list is getting really large. There are several things out of scope for this project that definitely need to be addressed, such as event insurance and alcohol permits.â Darlene and Kymberly are determined to continue their quest for improvement.
Darlene Schlueter is an Associate Director for the UC San Diego Center for Student Involvement working with student organizations and campus-wide events. She is also a Lean Six Sigma Green Belt.
Kymberly Epperson is an Event Services Coordinator for the UC San Diego Center for Student Involvement assisting student organizations throughout the event planning process and she is also a Lean Six Sigma Green Belt.
