LEAN APPROACHES TO PUBLIC SERVICES

Lean approaches to Public services



Lean approaches to Public services

Introduction

In the business world, organizations have to compete with companies that produce similar goods. To be successful against the competition, an organization must have a competitive strategy. Without a competitive strategy, the company would have a difficult time in competing successfully for the duration. The strategy of an operation is based on how the competitive environment is changing and what the business needs to do in order to meet the future and current challenges. The development for a business of the operations processes and human resources has to be on a platform that would give the business a leading edge. Once the company has a clear understanding of the direction they are heading, then the company can have a more competitive organizational strategy (Straub, 1994)). In addition to my focus on implementing Lean with systems, I will add commentary on implementing Lean in support organizations. I have spent much of my career doing this, often as part of bigger improvement efforts. I am seeing more companies begin to focus on productivity in support and the back office. The Lean concepts absolutely apply, but the approaches must be adapted to account for the differences presented by supporting organizations.

Discussion

Operations management (OM) is defined as the design, operation, and improvement of the systems that create and deliver the firm's primary products and services. Like marketing and finance, OM is a functional field of business with clear line management responsibilities. (Chase, Jacobs, Aquilano, 2006)

First we should define supporting processes. Typically this entails anything that is not part of the core end to end product design and delivery processes of a company. Functionally, it includes activities in HR, IT, parts of Finance, legal, some Engineering activities and a multitude of other corporate staff processes. I include only part of Finance because things like AR and AP would typically be group with core end to end processes. Let's start today with a quick review of the differences in support work. Here are a few differences that are probably apparent to most, but still seem to be forgotten while delivering actual projects.

Basic nature of the work

Supporting processes tend to be very short and triggered based on calendar or specific need. As such, traditional process flows or value stream maps often provide limited value. When looking at efficiency, it is frequently important to look at the hand-offs and number of times that a work product is “touched.” We often use these same techniques in operations, for instance to look at multiple handling of open orders. In this case, the products are often not defined with the same consistency and rigor. Leading to our next point (Senge, 1990).

Limited visibility

Visual workplace concepts strive to make performance visible to anyone standing on the manufacturing floor. There are conceptual analogies in the back office, but these are fundamentally different. Even a company not practicing Lean can readily perceive that something is going wrong when inventory ...