1. Brief Introduction to Lean
What is it?
Lean is two things at once: a structured, participative approach to process improvement and a mechanism to promote a shift towards a continuous improvement culture.
Where did it come from?
Lean originated in the automotive industry, coming out of the Toyota Production System (TPS) in the 1970s and 1980s. The term was coined in the late 1980s in “The Triumph of Lean Production” (Krafcik, 1998) but was popularised by the work of Womack and Jones who wrote three books on Lean during the 1990s and 2000s. These were “The Machine that changed the World” (1990), “Lean Thinking” (1996) and “Lean Solutions” (2005). These books show how Lean moved out of the automotive industries, into wider manufacturing and then into service industries.
How has it evolved?
TPS built on quality and automation mechanisms from the US in the early 20th century; Lean evolved from TPS, Systems Thinking and Lean Six Sigma evolved from Lean at various points. This presentation will cover the key points of Lean and how they can be used to make process improvements in a structured approach.
How is it being used in Higher Education?
Lean was first used in the UK HE sector by St Andrew’s and Cardiff in the mid-2000s. Other institutions have started to use Lean techniques. St Andrew’s and Strathclyde are considered to be the furthest along their Lean evolutions. Oxford trialled Lean in 2016 within AAD to look at processes related to Student Fees and Funding.

2. Why use Lean? Process improvement and service enhancement
Create a better experience for our students and staff
Focus on delivering excellent service and value from our resources
Improvement culture
Creating a culture of improvement & innovation
Empowering staff to deliver change
Lean helps organisations and individuals focus on a number of different perspectives:
It puts customers (whether that is students or staff) at the centre of processes and examines what it is they want from the process, what would they value?
This helps to identify what excellent service actually looks like from the customer perspective
Then other activities which don’t deliver this value to the customer can be questioned – why do them? Compliance, tradition etc.
Wasted activities are removed from the process, focusing resources on valuable activities
By working together in a structured approach to process improvement, engagement with change across participating organisation units is increased.
A shared language for change, greater engagement and improved relationships help make change and continuous improvement sustainable

3. Five Lean Principles Identify Customers and Specify Value
Identify and Map the Value Stream
Create Flow by Eliminating Waste
Respond to Customer Pull
Pursue Perfection
These are the five Lean principles which we’ll go through in more detail.

4. Customers & Value Who are the customers?
What value do they seek from the process?
Do they have different needs, priorities and requirements?
Which group of customers are the most important for this process?
Customers might be:
Students – wider population, those who approach service, those who use service
Staff – might be customers of administrative processes
The University – is a customer in that it provides resources for services
Funding bodies – might be customers in that they provide resources to the University/Students
Visitors – might be customers which use the services

5. Identifying the Value Stream
Use Process Maps
Identify and discuss activities, decisions, information requirements
Question and challenge the way things are done:
Which activities deliver value?
Which do not? Why are they done?
Does everyone do things similarly?
Can things be simplified?
Where is duplication?
Where are the bottlenecks?

6. Create Flow by Eliminating Waste
Waste: “Any activity that does not add Value”
Waste is not necessarily inefficiency
Examples of waste:
Poor communication
Repeated Activity
Bureaucracy
Delays, Queues, Waiting
Waste in the eyes of a customer might be compliance activities i.e. valuable in the eyes of another “customer” of the process. Be clear about whether waste is waste for all customers and the appropriate levels of compliance activity for the risk associated with the process.
Failure Demand
Mistakes & Errors
Sorting & Searching
Over Processing / Over Delivery
Ineffective Meetings
Duplication
Under/ Over loaded staff/ systems

7. Create Flow by Eliminating Waste
Challenge wasteful activity:
Transparency
Walk through process as a customer
Take a wider perspective
5 Whys?
What are the safety nets?
Customer viewpoints – useful for identifying long elapsed periods when to the customer, nothing seems to be happening, no value is being added
Wider perspective – what is the overarching outcome we’re looking for? Rather than just the process outputs…
5 Whys – questioning method to find root causes, reasons why things are done. Ask 5 times…
Safety nets are put in place based on things that might have happened before e.g. complicated cover arrangements because three people were long term sick at the same time and then someone else was late, a systems failure in an old system requiring manual override which is still being done even though a new system is in place, distrust of electronic solutions like e-signatures.

8. Respond to Customer Pull
Effective Lean systems respond to Customer Demand
How does the service respond to fluctuations in level of demand?
How does the service respond to fluctuations in type of demand? (Runner, Repeater, Stranger)
Concepts: Flow, Bottlenecks, Simplicity
Reduce: stages, handovers
Increase: transparency, visibility, clarity of ownership
Demand Levels – high, low, seasonal?
Type of demand:
Runner – normal service user, normal service process, we know how to deal with this. What percentage of user interactions are normal, well documented, frequent?
Repeater – not a normal request or service user type, out of the ordinary but we have seen this before. Might happen on a monthly basis rather than daily or weekly. Might not have a written down process but have organisational knowledge
Stranger – not seen this before (request or user type), how do we react? Do we need supervisor/manager intervention etc.
Flow – How do things pass through the service? Batched, flow, this only happens on a Tuesday etc.
Bottlenecks – where does elapsed time exist in the process, where do things wait for the next step?
Simplicity – where are things unnecessarily complicated? What is the minimum we need to do to pass things to the next step?
Stages – number of groups of steps in the process between which elapsed time may occur
Handovers – when process goes from one group to another, issues with information relay and elapsed time

9. Pursue Perfection Incremental Change vs Process Re-engineering
What do customers really want?
How do “best in class” organisations deliver services?
How can changes in technology enable radical change?
Continuous Improvement
Empowered, critical, positive culture
A learning culture
Customer focused
Lean process review can lead to incremental change. Making the current process better. Looking at the process from the inside-out.
What If you look at the process from the outside-in? What outcomes does the customer value? Could you deliver the outcomes using a different process with reduced inputs, reduced process overheads and save time/resources?
Look internally to see what team members know, look elsewhere to discover different processes, different uses of technology etc.
How can we continue to improve after the specific Lean project is over?

10. Using Lean As-is process maps Challenge from Lean Perspectives:
Customer & Value
Waste
Flow
Perfection
How is performance measured?
To-be process maps
Action plans (90 day delivery)
Generic approach to Lean. More details available in the Lean Resource Pack.

11. Brief Lean Review Who are the customers of the process?
What outcomes does each customer group want from the process?
Who are the most important customers?
Who are runners, repeaters and strangers in this process?
Who are the different service providers in the process?
What activities are they involved in?
What outputs are they producing? Or what services are they delivering?
Try to draw up a high-level process map from the information given
What information is missing that you would need participants to provide?
Which activities deliver value to customers?
What waste can you see in the process?
How does the process flow?
What is the elapsed time from start to completion vs. the total time taken to complete tasks?
Where are the bottlenecks?
Does everyone do things in the same way or is there variation?
How could you improve the process?
What incremental changes might you make?
What radical changes might you make to achieve perfection?

12. Plan a Lean Project What might a project plan look like?
What would the scope of the project be?
What might the project look to deliver? How would success be measured?
What are the drivers for change? What might be challenges to implementing change?
Which people would you invite along to Lean workshops?
What would their roles be?
What data would you want to collect beforehand?
How is process performance measured?
How might you challenge the current process from Lean perspectives?
Customers
Value
Waste
Flow
Perfection
Find an example project plan in the take away pack!