Lean Federal Government

Applying Lean to Government Services

Lean Government means doing more with less. Less delays, less spending, less resources, less talking and more action, more effective legislature in record time. Lean Government Systems is an approach that is intolerant of waste while continuing to reduce the need for Government Services.

Lean Government applies to all agencies within the Government. From reducing the time to receive a tax refund to reducing the need for disaster assistance. From SBA, FEMA to TSA and DOD, Lean principles offer the breakthrough strategies to limit the size of our Government, reducing spending without the fear of negatively impacting next year's budget.

Government agencies and commercial businesses strive for better organizational performance, streamlined processes, and customer-focused services with lower costs.

Today's defense organizations — Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, DOD — face staggering increases in manpower requirements while at the same time being forced to reduce head counts. The idea of creating an organization that can meet these challenges without negatively impacting response times or quality seems to good to be true. We know more funding is not the answer. We need to do more, faster, with less.

Government agencies like the USAF and Navy have taken and applied lessons learned from the private sector. In the last ten years many companies in the private sector have been successfully applying Lean Principles. Lean is a term defined by Dr. James Womack after an extensive review of what Toyota Motor Company (TMC) has been doing over the last 55 yrs. Dr.  Womack noted the overwhelming theme was more with less. Less labor, less lead-time, less defects, less space, less delays. They had developed a Lean enterprise.

The entire TMC organization has developed a passion for eliminating waste. At the Toyota Motor Company, the term Lean means "The Endless Pursuit of Waste Elimination." The USAF has institutionalized Lean by creating a dedicated collection of change agents known as the "Transformation Group" to lead their improvement efforts enterprise wide. The Navy has recently begun its Lean journey by creating the "Lean Task Force Initiative".

Why change? Both civil and defense are now being held up to much higher breakthrough standards of efficiency. Increasing speed of execution while reducing costs requires higher standards for consistency. Higher standards will force the adoption of breakthrough strategies.

Lean State Government                                           

Applying Lean to State Government Services

Lean Government means doing more with less. Less delays, less spending, less resources, less talking and more action, more effective legislature in record time. Lean Government Systems is an approach that is intolerant of waste while continuously challenging the need for Government Services.

Lean Government applies to all agencies within the Government. From reducing the time to receive a tax refund to reducing the need for disaster assistance. From SBA, FEMA to TSA and DOD, Lean principles offer the breakthrough strategies to limit the size of our Government, reducing spending without the fear of negatively impacting next year's budget.

Examples of Lean State Government include:

1. Improving the response of the Department of Natural Resources by reducing the time to approve funding for waste water treatment facilities

2. Reducing the time to approve water treatment facilities

3. Reduce the time and effort in the finance department by challenging ever step in the bond process.

4. Establishing standard operations to guarantee each community can meet budget challenges by following the best practices.

Lean City Government                                                        

Applying Lean to City Government Services

The state of Florida has a problem similar to other states. The current 2007 housing market is in a major historical slump, however our Florida Govenor, Governor Charlie Crist, is working on drastically reducing property taxes in-order to stimulate the economy. When the tax payers in Florida here that property taxes will be lowered we don't feel the shockwave of fear going through city and local governments. Each of the local governments believe that cuts in budgets will lead directly to reducing police and firefighting personnel. So, how do you deal with the impending crisis of drastically reduced budgets, be proactive. Florida cities have taken proven commercial practices (Lean Enterprise implementation) and been applying Lean Government System principles to improve issues in each of the city value streams (departments).

City Government Transformation Examples include:

Maintaining the same level of city government employee/budget while the city population grows more than 30 percent over a seven year period.

PLANNING/PERMITTING - Reduce the time to approve commercial site permits from 27days first review to less than 5days with no more than two toal submittals with less resources. Plan on completing comercial site reviews in 4hrs.

CODE ENFORCEMENT - Reduce the time to be in code compliance from 57days to less than 14days, establish a system to expose problems and take corrective actions daily

FINANCE - Reduce the number of purchase orders from over 7000/yr to under 2500/yr and the time to approve a purchase order from 6days to less than 1-day. Reduce the time to complete the accounts payable process by challenging ever step in the process.  Improve productivity by 25-50% and use freed-up resources to work on other projects.

HR DEPARTMENT - Reduce the time to place fire and police personnel from +60days to under 30days including providing a two week notice.

PUBLIC WORKS - Reduce city backlog projects from 2years to complete drainage swales to less than 6months without adding additional resources.

POLICE - Improve moral by implementing a system that allows each personel member to see and destroy waste.  The city of Jacksonville Florda has combined city and municipal governments to improve communication and reduce the cost of public safety.

FIRE - Improve response to the community by evaluating the majority of service calls, typically 70 percent of the calls are health related. What resources show up at a health related service call? Are you able to transport the patient using fire department vehicles.

 

Transformation Principles

The following describes some of the organizational improvement methodologies that are successfully applied as strategic initiatives.

Six Sigma

Six Sigma is a systematic and customer-focused discipline for driving out defects and reducing variation in processes. It is a disciplined and data-driven methodology that seeks to minimize the possibility of making unsuitable products or services for any process.

Common outcomes of Six Sigma implementation include:
• A substantial decrease in defects
• Measurable and significant reductions in costs
• A view of the business from the perspective of the customer
• Improved organizational execution
• Exceptional quality of services
• More efficient administrative processes

Lean Principles

Lean Principles focus on creating an uncontrollable desire to expose and eliminate waste in all its forms. Lean Practitioners make their business processes run faster and more efficiently with a quick return on the investments they make toward improvements.

Some key results from employing Lean Principles include:
• Drastic improvement in response times
• Process simplifications and error proofing
• Productivity gains of +100%
• Elimination of the costs associated with non value added activities
• Reduction in losses
• Minimization of work in process inventories
• Greater flexibility to adjust to changes

Value Management

Practitioners of Value Management improve productivity and efficiency by identifying the "What" or intent of each service or step and challenging its existence. Practitioners of Value Analysis/Value Engineering focus on the intent, not the "How" or method, to meet the intent. Team members use simple verb-noun pairs to define the intent and challenge the need, or identify alternate approaches to meet the same intent. The key outcome of Value Management is process velocity improvements and an enormous reduction in costs.

Rapid Breakthrough Performance Teams

The creation of internal teams combined with the right fundamentals for operation fosters an organization of motivated employees biased toward action and committed to continual improvement and rapid adaptation. By putting decision-making in the hands of the individuals most affected by the decision, Rapid Breakthrough Performance Teams allow employees to assume ownership and accountability. A key outcome of employing Rapid Performance Teams is that managers and leaders are freed up to provide strategic direction rather than focusing on day to day operations.

LeanBreakthru

LeanBreakthru is the ultimate fusion of Lean, Six Sigma, Value Management and Rapid Breakthrough Performance Teams. As Lean Principles focus on simple improvements to reduce waste and increase process velocity and Six Sigma provides tools and methods to improve simple and complex process capability by increasing process efficiency and operational effectiveness, the two methodologies are often viewed as complimentary. The combination of the two methods with Value management and Rapid Breakthrough Performance Teams provides a powerful process-focused set of tools and principles for strategic organizational improvement.

Why Choose LeanBreakthru Consulting Group?

LeanBreakthru has a rich history in the application of the quality improvement methods described above. We specialize in large-scale applications for commercial clients as well as government clients, both civil and military.