Municipal and parish government officials are constantly juggling the need to improve the quality of services with a flat or shrinking tax base. Just as many corporations and private businesses have adopted management methods to increase capacity by eliminating waste, governmental organizations can improve the level of services to their constituents by applying the same tools.
Forward-thinking leaders are realizing that not only can they manage their government expenses with Lean thinking, they can actually improve the level of service! Lean focuses on identifying and eliminating eight primary areas of waste, listed here with a few examples:
- Defects: Data entry errors, pricing errors, missing information, missed specifications, lost records, misspelled street signs
- Overproduction: Producing in excess of customer requests, or before the customer requires it, creating more information than the process requires, creating reports that no one reads, making extra copies
- Waiting: Waiting for faxes, for the system to come back up, the copy machine, a customer’s response, a handed-off file to come back, for repair parts
- Non-Value Added Processing: Performing more than the customer requires or desires, creating reports that are not used, repeated manual entry of data, use of outdated standard forms, use of inappropriate software
- Transportation: Retrieving or storing physical files, carrying documents to and from shared equipment, taking files to another person, going to get signatures; multiple approvals; multiple handoffs, going back to the central warehouse for equipment
- Inventory: Files waiting to be worked on, permits to be approved, inspections waiting for completion, stored unused records, excess equipment, obsolete repair parts; batch processing reports
- Motion: Searching for files, extra clicks or key strokes, repeated data entry, looking through books for information, handling paperwork
- Underutilized Employees: Unbalanced workload, unplanned maintenance, misuse of automation, limited employee authority and responsibility, overbearing command and control.
When you understand these wastes, you begin to see them. And more importantly, when your employees understand them, they see them as well. That said, you don’t want to rush out and make wholesale changes to your processes without considering the overall impact of the change. To prevent moving a problem to another group, you must look at an entire process, not just portions within a single activity area. One of the best ways to do this is with a value-stream map, or VSM, which clearly identifies the entire process.
Value stream mapping is one of the most basic foundations for any Lean initiative. You can learn more about how value stream mapping can be effectively used to identify wastes in your organization by contacting us for a free assessment of your operations.
