Lean Thinking & Practice in a Scottish Local Authority

Background

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 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 Raymond Bisset. 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.

In September 2005 the approach was further endorsed:

“ We will strengthen the Kaizen Blitz team to help it seek out ever more efficient ways of working. This team has an increasingly widely recognised track record of leading cross-service employee teams to boldly question and then radically improve and streamline the processes, which deliver services to the people of Aberdeenshire.” Audrey Findlay, Leader of the Council

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 correct kind of supportive, empowered environment was there for the Kaizen Team before, during and especially after the intervention.

Selection of Kaizen champion and facilitators

Being a Kaizen Facilitator is challenging and requires a special kind of individual.

Being a Kaizen Champion is even harder. In addition to doing everything a facilitator does they have the responsibility for developing the organisations overall Lean approach and tailoring it to fit specific circumstances.

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. On 22nd September they also won an Excellence Award at the 8th Annual Congress of UDITE which was held in Malta this year.

Conclusion

As concluded by the Warwick Report Lean does work in the Public Sector. The AC experience outlined above played an important role in arriving at this conclusion. The key influence to make all this happen was the dedication and total unwavering commitment of the Chief Executive, Alan Campbell. He made it very clear from the outset that this had his full backing. He took every chance he could to reinforce this message. He made it crystal clear that Lean was about increasing productivity so that the freed up resources could be redeployed to improve customer service. In this way he removed the fear and gave his whole workforce a unifying purpose.

“Kaizen is now beginning to embed itself within the Council’s strategic approach to quality development. It lies at the heart of our corporate commitment to continuous improvement in the way we deliver services to customers, and supports the Council’s approach to achieving Best Value by bringing about real improvements in service performance.” Scottish Executive, Warwick report, section 6.23.

It's all about people

“I passionately believe that the Kaizen approach will release the potential of employees in the organisation. It will bring lasting improvement and make people feel more valued.” Alan Campbell, CE, Aberdeenshire Council July 2005.