HOT TOPIC - Lean Techniques

In recognition of the public sector's developing interest in Lean, Methods has teamed up with recognised Lean experts Ad Esse Consulting to offer clients a straightforward way to realise their full potential.

Here we explain how...
Lean can trace its roots back to the revolution in car manufacturing. Over the last 40 years, Toyota has used Lean to develop into the most profitable car maker in the world. The Toyota Production System (TPS) has been the basis of this transformation and is a rigorous method of managing all elements of business, from design to manufacture. TPS is all about reducing waste, continuous improvement, and employee engagement within a manufacturing environment - and Lean is its application to any business sector.

Today, Lean has extended both throughout manufacturing and service industries in the private sector and continues to deliver substantial improvements in customer service as well as significant reductions in cost. Importantly, it’s a broader commitment to continuous improvement, building organisations’ ability constantly to challenge and improve. As a result, the scale of benefits is greater and longer lasting than would be achievable from merely streamlining processes.

Applying Lean to the Public Sector
Although the benefits of this approach have been recognised in the private sector for over ten years, it is only in the last couple of years that the public sector has really grasped the nettle of implementing Lean. So how is Lean different in the public sector, which is about managing people and processes, and delivering to customers, service users and stakeholders? Transferring Lean to the public sector has not always been easy, due to a number of factors that include the difficulty of applying ideas to an office environment, poor understanding of the role of management in implementing Lean and occasional reluctance to commit to continuous improvement rather than seeing it as a one-off activity.

Organisations therefore need to be clear about what they want to achieve with Lean. Are Lean tools being used to deliver process improvement or to transform more fully into a continually improving ‘Lean organisation’? Using Lean to deliver initial process improvement – in other words, starting small - is a common and sensible starting point for any organisation, and indeed many organisations have found this the simplest way to begin introducing Lean principles.

Bringing Lean to the UK Border Agency
Methods worked with Lean partners Ad Esse Consulting to review key case management processes for the UK Border Agency. Methods and Ad Esse ran the Lean process in the Managed Migration area of the UK Border Agency’s Liverpool site, with the objectives of addressing customer service issues and improving productivity. Initially people waited on average over 4 months for a decision on nationality applications – and working from this baseline, we conducted a diagnostic and produced a series of improvement objectives, running ‘blitzes’ over 5 months, some focused on individual caseworker productivity and some on the flow of cases through the department. In each case radically new processes were introduced. With the exception of one group of applicants where the process was outside of the UK Border Agency control, cycle times have come down to less than three weeks and average productivity for caseworkers has risen 15%.

So what next? Methods can help you at any stage of your Lean journey. We can help define a vision and objectives for your organisation – scoping the potential benefits of Lean for your working environment; assessing both value streams and culture to develop a clear improvement plan; developing your internal resource and capability to deliver and lead Lean; supporting the pathfinder initiatives to prove the principles and deliver early benefits; and scaling up to roll out across your whole organisation. To find out more please contact Chloe Butler.

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