Aberdeenshire Council

Lean Thinking & Practice in a Scottish Local Authority

In October 2001 Aberdeenshire CE, Alan Campbell, was made aware of a successful application of Lean practice. This case study is about their journey from this initial awareness through to becoming self-sufficient in the application of Lean to their present level where they are winning Scottish and European awards for their contribution to Efficiency in Local Government.

Becoming aware of the power of lean thinking

In July 2001 the Scottish Executive piloted a Kaizen Blitz (Rapid Improvement Event) in the Central Correspondence Unit. The Kaizen Team presented their results at a Quality Scotland Lean and Kaizen Awareness session held in Aberdeen. This led to Ross International being invited to address the entire Aberdeenshire Council Management Team and help them understand what Lean was. This led to two further Kaizen events, one in Finance and one in Personnel.

Involvement of Elected members

In April 2004 they decided to raise a tender for training a Continuous Improvement Champion and several service facilitators. Prior to awarding the tender it was felt essential to give the Elected Members a chance to understand what Lean was and have their concerns addressed. Ross International was asked to address a special meeting of 40 Members led by the Provost. Their initial concerns were quickly dispersed and they started to realise that this was a systems approach that would involve all the right people in doing whatever needed to be done to improve the services delivered to the electorate.

A plan of attack was developed which depended on the involvement and acceptance of the people actually doing the work. In the weeks leading up to the first Kaizen all the regions were visited by the two trainee facilitators and the Kaizen Team Leader to explain what was about to happen and ask for their input, cooperation and support. A multi-level, multidisciplinary team representing all the departments and all the regions involved was assembled in Garioch for the week of the Kaizen.

A plan of attack was developed which depended on the involvement and acceptance of the people actually doing the work. In the weeks leading up to the first Kaizen all the regions were visited by the two trainee facilitators and the Kaizen Team Leader to explain what was about to happen and to ask for their input, cooperation and support. A multi-level, multi-disciplinary team representing all the departments and all the regions involved was assembled in Gairloch for the week of the Kaizen.

The Importance of top management commitment

During the tender process it became clear to AC that creating the desired continuous improvement environment could not be done without a significant change in the thinking and behaviour of the senior management team. An intensive 2-day workshop was run for the entire top management team (CE, Directors, Area Managers) to let them experience what changes would be required and build a supportive environment that would assure the success of later interventions.

Prior to the first Kaizen Blitz in all 8 services, a similar 1-day workshop was held with up to 22 of the managers and key influencers present at each. Again the objective was to ensure that the correct kind of supportive, empowered environment was there for the Kaizen Team before, during and especially after the intervention.

Self Sufficiency

The Aberdeenshire Council plan was for one full-time Kaizen Champion and one part-time facilitator for each service. However, as they started to see the results that could be generated they changed the model to increase the amount of facilitation expertise available. Some services now have their own full-time person.

Learning to facilitate Kaizen is a hands-on activity. It cannot be done from a book. Ross International trained the first two facilitators over a series of Kaizen Blitz interventions then coached these facilitators in the training of the next wave. It took the planned 9 months working with external help to achieve their goals and make them completely self-sufficient.

Results

Aberdeenshire Council completed their planned 40 interventions by Christmas 2006, only 2 years after the now Champion’s first experience. Every service has benefited. One example is the processing of Planning Applications. The percentage of applications reaching the planner’s desks in 3 days was increased from 2% to 100% and the productivity of the people doing the processing increased by 160%. This gave them more time to tackle other work they never had time for before.

Another event in Social Work saved the equivalent of 9 full-time Social Workers across Aberdeenshire by stripping out the waste associated with the generation of reports. Productivity gains have enabled better service through redeployment of freed resources. Visiting Public Sector bodies, including the NHS, have started their own Lean journey as a result. The Scottish Executive report on Lean in the Public Sector (Warwick Report, June 06) makes reference to the above successes.

Recognition

In June 06 they won a COSLA Gold award for their work on Lean ans in September 06 they won a European Excellence Award at the 8th Annual Congress of UDITE which was held in Malta.

2010 Update:

The Kaizen spirit is still very much alivedespite the fact that most of the people who were instrumental in introducing Lean to the Council in 2004/05 have now left the organisation.

The Council is continuing to run the regular one-week long Kaizen Blitz events and they have also developed a shorter version where the challenge is not big enough for a whole week. They have recognised the importance of the follow-through and are training staff to help manage daily improvements after the Kaizen Blitz events.