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Tag Archives: LeanInGovernment

Baldrige Rapid Access

23 Friday Oct 2015

Posted by Dan Edds in Praxis Solutions

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Baldridge, Baldrige, DanEdds, Featured, LeanInGovernment, NationalBaldrideQualityAward

Accelerate the journey! 

Baldrige Rapid Access© was developed in conjunction with Performance Excellence Northwest, the regional Baldrige association This is an entirely new path toward a Baldrige journey. In development for 2 years it takes the normal 6-9 months of work to write a Baldrige application, submit it to a group of examiners, judges, and receive either a site visit or an executive briefing, down to a few weeks. We do this by engaging a small team of professional facilitators and Baldrige examiners in a process of self discovery. In this way, your organization develops its own observations of strengths and opportunities. In addition, the Baldrige framework and values are driven deeper into your organization.

For many organizations it takes 2-3 applications to begin understanding the core of the framework – Approach, Deployment, Learning, and Integration. This is lost time. This approach also mirrors what the national organization is doing but with some additional value added benefits: 1) develops internal Baldrige capacity and leadership; and 2) faster turn around from application submittal to deployed projects to improve excellence.

 

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Government

23 Friday Oct 2015

Posted by Dan Edds in Praxis Solutions

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DanEdds, Featured, LeanInGovernment, StrategyMapping

We hear all the time, “government should operate more like a business”. After consulting with government agencies now for nearly 20 years we are convinced of one thing – those who say this, are the first to back away from it when the opportunity to function like a business arises.

But there is one area where government can function like a business and when it does magic happens. This is in the area of measuring and scorecarding. We just completed a project for a large county in central Oregon. Good people running the County. Strong and improving economy. The project focused on the revenues into the Community Development Department, developing a 5 year financial plan, and creating a Balanced Scorecard to help them manage the department by fact and result.

The results are early but the opportunities are clear: managers are using data to manage people, quality, and workloads. The Commissioners, upon seeing the scorecard and early results “excited”.

This is an exciting area for Praxis Solutions and one where are experience in scorecarding, performance management, and lean can have a real impact

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Translating Muda Into Government Speak

05 Wednesday Nov 2014

Posted by Dan Edds in Baldrige, Lean training, Praxis Solutions

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DanEdds, LeanInGovernment, LeanTraining

Does the types of waste or muda identified in lean training such as inventory, over production, and over processing translate into government “speak”? Of course they do but some translation work must be done.

When James Womack and Daniel Jones published their landmark book, Lean Thinking, they introduced a Japanese word into the manufacturing lexicon. The word is muda or what we would call waste in modern English. There are seven types of muda enumerated by the authors and the founders of lean principles. Each type of muda makes perfectly good sense in a manufacturing environment but may require some translation for a government application.

What we observe in much of lean training in government is that the language is so different that government leaders just tune out. This is not a negative hit on government leaders and workers. It is just the reality that all organizations have a unique language. So let’s look at those types of muda and see if we can make the translation. The specific example we will use in a government environment is payment of invoices and the awarding of financial aid in a college or university. Government does a lot of this. Let’s also remember the definition of muda = any activity that consumes resources but creates no value.

Over production

Producing too many parts for an assembly line is clear waste. But it also applies in a payment to grantees. Think of regulations as parts of an assembly line. If a process is designed that goes beyond what is required by a regulatory body, it has the same effect as producing too many engines for the assembly line. A State transportation agency providing federal funding to local municipalities for public transit must meet certain regulatory requirements. If errors are made penalties are the usual result. But in one agency the tendency was to error on the side of over regulation. There were so good at it, that when the feds were not sure of their own regulations, they just asked the State transportation group.

Waiting

A part sitting in inventory, waiting for installation creates no value for the customer. But does the same concept apply to paying invoices for grantees. Think of a single invoice, sitting on not one desk for a review but five desks. One school district found that it was taking up to 6 months to pay staff for the extra work they did like driving students to the debate tournament. Once they figured out all the points of waiting they figured out how to get it done in 10 days.

Transport

Transporting a single part to multiple warehouses clearly creates no value. But moving paper documents around an office has the same impact. In one of our lean engagements it was discovered that every invoice passed the desk of the same person 6-7 times. And this was just one person, this happened with multiple people. So do the math. Assume every invoice must pass 3 people 6 times. That is 18 touch points at a minimum! That is also 18 points where invoices get lost. Clearly, this is muda.

Over processing

Manufacturing parts for an airplane that goes beyond the design specifications is clear waste. In the same way, many government processes are designed for the once in a million event. A workers compensation insurance trust sets up the same invoice payment review process for a $25 invoice as it does for a $2,500 invoice. The smallest invoices must go through three levels of review just like the largest invoices. While there is clear value in a comprehensive review of large invoices applying the same review requirements to very small invoices means the cost of paying the invoice is more than the invoice itself. One government workers compensation trust dramatically improved their speed of payment by setting up simple business rules. Smaller invoices went through one review process, larger ones went through a different one. The result was faster payment, stronger negotiating power with medical providers and better business intelligence to serve their ultimate customer.

Inventories

A warehouse full of parts clearly creates no value for the customer. In the same way, money sitting in a bank can be inventory. If it is not put to immediate use building roads, paying medical claims, or getting a student off to university it is creating no value for the ultimate customer. When an Office of Financial Aid cuts in half the time it takes to process an application, money is going to work for the benefit of the intended student – faster.

Movement

The constant movement of parts is something that manufacturing organizations are just now understanding as muda. Parts get lost, parts don’t arrive on time, and parts get broken. In the same way, invoices and paper documentation that moves around has the same problems. They get lost, issues are not resolved on time, and there are multiple points in the process that will cause late payment. One office of financial aid stopped the movement merry go round but only giving 10 application packets for financial aid to each processor at a time. They could not get more until the 10 were completed. The results were fewer errors, no lost files, and staff were happier – they could see progress on a daily basis.

Defective Parts

We understand that buying anything that has to be returned because some small part is defective is irritating and expensive. The same applies for an invoice payment operations. Errors in coding and data are just as expensive. A simple error in data entry is a small thing to fix early in the process. But towards the end it can be catastrophic. On Office of Financial Aid designed two simple check lists. Much like airline pilots go through a check list for every takeoff and landing, this Office designed two check lists to catch errors before they had catastrophic impact. Besides fewer errors, they also realized that the check lists resulted in more standardized work because every knew the process.

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Assessing the Office of Financial Aid

04 Tuesday Nov 2014

Posted by Dan Edds in Praxis Solutions

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DanEdds, FinancialAid, Lean Government, LeanInGovernment, OfficesFinancialAidConsulting

Let’s assume for a moment that your Office of Financial Aid is in perfect compliance with its regulatory requirements. Let’s also assume for the moment that you have the latest technology to manage your Office and that the president of your institution just congratulated your entire office for excellent work.
But the question is this: are you maximizing your financial and human capital so that your customers are receiving maximum value?
Who is your customer and do you know their requirements? In reality, every Office of Financial Aid probably has at least three customers and all three need to be served.

  1. The regulators or the ones setting the rules;
  2. The lenders or the ones providing the money that the Office distributes; and
  3. The students themselves.

What often happens in government organizations is that the regulators become the primary customer and the student or citizen becomes something less. We serve the regulations and forget the group that actually consumes the service we provide. For example, we once did a lean process improvement project for a large state granting organization. Every biennium they awarded over $165 million dollars in grants. In asking them who were their customers, they all said the groups receiving the grants. However, every work process and ever measure of performance was designed to keep the regulators happy. In fact, they were so happy that when the Federal regulators could not figure out their own regulations, the regulators came to them to for help.
Organizational excellence means more than maintaining a check list in the regulations manual. It is about the continuous removal of waste so that maximum value can be added to the customer – all of them. The result of this, is that over time costs go down per dollar awarded. Certainly this does not happen every year, but over time this is the history of improving work processes.
We have developed a way of assessing Offices of Financial Aid. The assessment is totally free. We won’t even ask for your name and contact information. The assessment does one really simple thing – it measures where your Office is at on a scale of performance excellence. In other words, it measures your Office against what the best performing organizations, of all types, do to achieve excellence.
We suggest taking the assessment as a group. It will probably take 45 minutes. When you get done, let us know what you learned. You can contact us at: info@PraxisSolutionsNP.com
For downloading the Self-Assessment

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Does Lean Work in Government?

27 Monday Oct 2014

Posted by Dan Edds in Praxis Solutions

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DanEdds, FinancialAid, Lean Government, LeanInGovernment, WorkersCompensationTrust

A general “rule of thumb” is that a lean kaizen workshop should identify improvements of about 50%. Normally, this is a reduction of processing time of about 50%. But the question is this: will the principles of lean work in government? Let’s review the values of lean:

  • The value of people
  • The value of learning
  • The value of innovation and adaptability
  • Standard work processes
  • The value of transparency
  • The value of velocity vs. speed (or speed and direction)

Do any of these values sound like impossible for any government agency to honor? Of course not. If any organization should adopt these values it is government. But question still stands, will it work.

Two examples: a workers compensation trust that self insures 34,000 public school staff and an office of financial aid. Both government agencies. Both adopted lean as a performance improvement methodology. And both identified opportunities to reduce processing time of – 50%. Guess it does work.

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