Sometimes being a process improvement expert is a curse, especially when you’re the customer receiving bad service from an organization. In the midst of experiencing the bad service, do you ever start to analyze why the process is so poorly designed? I want to share a story from my own…
Leader Standard Work is a set of actions, tools and behaviors incorporated into the daily work of leaders to create a Lean Management System. One of the first priorities is to make your work environment more visible, so a great tool to start with is a Pulse Point Map. What Is…
Check out how the City of SeaTac improved their Right-of -Way Permit Process by completing a Process Walk and Rapid Improvement (Kaizen) Event. What Is a Rapid Improvement Event? A Rapid Improvement Event (also known as a Kaizen Event) involves key process participants focusing on solving a narrowly scoped process…
Don Quixote prioritized imagination, commitment, passion – and fused them with purpose. How might employing his character as a role-model for our journey through Quality affect our results? Borrowing from the work of James G. March,1 professor emeritus at Stanford University, what insights concerning quality can be drawn from observing…
Your process improvement effort is going splendidly! You flowcharted, collected data, determined root cause and now, you finally get to discuss solutions. Sometimes the solutions are obvious – but what if they aren’t? It doesn't take hours of brainstorming to understand that Standard Work might be a good place to…
Island County wanted to issue its shoreline exemption permits in half the time of what it was once taking: 90 days. The County participated in the Local Government Performance's Center Lean Academy to find out how to improve and accomplish tasks faster. The new goal was to issue permits in…
Lean Six Sigma can help you improve anything from business processes to reducing your energy consumption at home. Want to save money on your energy bill or simply view a Lean Six Sigma project example? Check out this easy to follow example. View more examples of projects and ways Lean Six Sigma can…
Clark County participated in the Local Government Performance Center’s Lean Academy to help kickstart their permitting goal: cut the time it takes to issue a single family housing permit from 23 days to 11 days. On average, three out of four applications to build a new house in Clark County…
Process Improvement Gets the Red Carpet Treatment The 87th Oscars will be broadcast this coming Sunday, February 22, 2015. In Anthony Brezinican’s article in this weeks’ Entertainment Weekly, he covers Oscar producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron and their efforts to engineer a great show. This year marks their third effort and,…
Using the Lean philosophy, Kitsap County cut the time it took to approve a housing permit from 26 days to 8 days. Without reducing the staff or adding major resources, the Kitsap County team was able to eliminate more than 50 steps in their process. To eliminate these steps, the…