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Value adding with lean management

A lean inflow process

by: Hans Gremmen

Processbased work and leadership is gaining importance in government management. Most governmental agencies have difficulties in translating corporate ambition and plans into visible results, actions or projects on the operational level. The Province of Noord-Brabant is no exception to the rule. Although top management vision is essential, it’s not enough to make the difference. Bottom-up initiatives really make processbased work flourish!

The so-called ‘Gemeenschappelijke Dienst’ (‘joined’ or ‘collaborative’ services) is the internal shared service centre for the provincial organisation. It delivers all the products and services employees and management need for doing their job. Continuous improvement is on top of the agenda. Due to direct feedback on the delivered quality of their products and service customers constantly triggers them to evaluate and improve their processes. In a standardized way improvement projects lead to better service and results.

Business case: the inflow of new employees

Employees are one of the most valuable assets in a knowledge-based organisation like the Province. There are three categories: civil servants, apprentices and people hired on a project-based contract.

It’s essential for the Province to have the process -from appointment until the first day at the new job- to be in flow, being efficient and effective. Beside it, for the new member we want it to be a complaisant experience as well. Meaning feeling welcome and being welcome!

However, there was a lead-time and delivery problem!

Background

The province welcomes more than 400 new collegues per year. The moment a manager has closed the contract, he has to ‘buy’ several services from internal suppliers: a workplace, salary, desktop-pc and/or notebook, networkaccess, user-id, entrance-badge et cetera. These services are delivered by multiple internal departments, often in a serial way, sometimes parallel. The manager had no overview of the overall delivery process. This required a lot of attention and monitoring, numerous contact moments and still ended up in frustration and mistakes.

The overall leadtime of all suplies and services usually took between 3 and 4 weeks. Some individual deliveries even took 2 weeks. In some cases processing took so long not all the services were delivered on day one!

Challenge to improve

For about ten years there had been initiatives to improve the process. People within the HRM-department, ICT and facilities management were aware of the need to make improvements. And they did. New forms were developed, and agreements settled between departments. But finally these attempts failed or didn’t lead to a better service to the manager and new employee. This time the project started with a clear but challenging target that suited the complexity of the chain process: “Map the overall chain process, the bottlenecks and redesign the process in a way a new employee is added to all relevant systems and is able to start-up immediately at day one. Indicate what needs to be done to finish the whole process within 24 hours.”
The scope was extensive: all basic services delivered by the Collaborative Services department, like salary, user-ID, software, telephone, office supplies, transport facilities agreement, workgear, application for the introduction program, and so on.

Lean it up!

Together with TAKT-consultant David Binnerts we leaned up the process, focusing on eliminating all the bureaucratic waste that was embedded in the way things were done. And making the people responsible for continuous improvement of the new process.

Step 1: Value Stream Mapping

After most of the parties concerned in the process execution got an introduction to the Toyota Way principles, we started mapping the process. In which we focussed merely on the next 3 lean principles:

Customer value: all value adding activities the manager and the new employee really need, nothing more, nothing less.
Flow: managing the ‘product’, in this case the application, to be in a continuous flow of value adding activities.
Muda:eliminating waste: transport, waiting, movement, multiple entry and processing of data, rework.
We spent one day in mapping the old process(es), get aware of the true scope of the causes and consequences. Handling one inflow case by all stations involved added up to almost 9 hours. And despite the available deliverytime of 3 to 4 weeks they weren’t able to deliver on time every time! Root cause: nobody felt responsible for the overall process, every department had its own process, application forms, agreements, planning, and perception of the end product. Internal interests prevaled. Information on new cases was spread in monthly batches instead of casewise. So, a lot of black boxes and unfinished leads! On the second day of the VSM we developed the lean solution: a redesigned process containing only value-adding activities and some necessary non-value adding activities. With minimal transfers, forms and interaction moments. At the same time we introduced a new role: the inflow-manager. This person takes care of almost all the registration, processing and actions needed to have a new employee on the job from the moment the manager pulls the string. Only a few technical complex actions are being processed by the IT department, triggered by the inflowmanager. The number of 6 forms was reduced to only 1 inflow form serving the whole process! The final third day was used to picture all the actions needed to make the new process possible, translated in a implementation plan. And finally have this proposition decided upon by the principal. With pride all involved ended this 3-day session. As the principal called it: ‘a result on both the intentional and the cultural level!’. Step 2: action week (Rapid Improvement Event) To keep the project in flow a rapid improvement event was planned three weeks later. In a highly concentrated manner all actions needed to implement the new process were being developed, by 9 small and effective teams. They developed items such as the common inflow form, the definition of the information set, technical procedures and measures, and so on. The results In the new process there is one process owner responsible for the overal chain process, and only one digital inflow form that feeds all the stations, without any physical transport. Information is transmitted instantly or handed over in person. This makes it efficient and better. The process has become more customer friendly: one trigger starts the whole process! We decided to start up with the category of temporarily hired employees to optimize the form and process. This category asks for the shortest lead time and the frustrations of direct improductivity show immediately! Nowadays all vital important services are delivered in less than a day, the less important services, like uploading a picture, within three days. The others categories are planned to be implemented before summer. Another benefit of the lean method is that we faced the problem internally, and started up process based continuous improvement. The inflowmanagers and processmanager use standardized problemsolving reports to constantly improve the process. The lean way The core of the lean way is to focus on standardizing the value adding process. Without standardizing there’s no foundation for improvement. To do so, the people adding value are the second point of focus. They own the knowledge and experience to redesign the process in an optimal way. Making them responsible for the overall process, day in day out, makes continuous improvement work!