Lean Applied To Post Secondary Institutions
Lean is being used as an innovative approach to improve student success and their experience. (Abstract)
Queen's University TEAM Program
Lean is a powerful business concept and transformational thinking utilized by many corporations faced with increasing world competitiveness and the Queen's University TEAM program is learning more about it. The Queen's university TEAM program provides 4th year engineering, commerce and law students the opportunity to work on multidisciplinary industrial projects. Year after year, our team participants provide superlative success for their clients, and they do so because they understand the clients' business needs and apply the technical, business and legal knowledge necessary for moving business forward faster. Lean is one of the necessary concepts that all businesses/organizations will need if they are to survive. Lean creates flexibility to meet customers/clients constantly changing demands, while reducing costs, improving quality and increasing the speed of providing the products and service. With the awareness of Lean provided by Lean Advisors Inc., Queen's students have an added edge of knowledge not only for helping achieve the objectives of their clients, but for the rest of their lives.
David Mody, P. Eng - Queen's University TEAM Coordinator
Recruitment Through Registration Process
Results include shortened delivery times, reduced wait times, improvements in service quality and product quality, increased revenues/decreased costs, process improvements, etc...
Algonquin College - Focused on Student Success
Algonquin College is committed to student success and improving the student experience as it prepares the workforce of tomorrow. This focus on student success led to the identification, by the School of Business, of Lean as an innovative and practical approach to continuous improvement. Lean involves reviewing a process from end-to-end with the ultimate objective being the provision of value to the client through the continual and systematic elimination of non-value added activities, from all aspects of the organization's operations.
Lean Advisors Inc. (LEAD®)
The adaptation of Lean to the College's unique situation and ensured sustainability within the organization required expert advice from professionals who had expertise in transforming non-traditional environments using Lean. Lean Advisors provided this advice. Lean Advisors had a solid background in Lean and had worked with companies around the world using Lean in service, administrative, government, healthcare, and manufacturing environments. The College chose Lean Advisors based on their experience and methods of transferring knowledge while adapting and applying the thinking of Lean to their administrative processes.
The Selected Value Stream
The Recruitment through Registration process was the first end-to-end process chosen for this initiative as it was a cross-departmental process which created value for their clients from the moment they showed interest in the College until they registered as students. To get started the College used the Enterprise Value Stream Mapping™ Tool. A system wide current state map was drawn and analyzed. Once analysed, the College was able to develop a future state and a detailed Lean implementation plan. The future state Lean implementation plan outlined all of the kaizens and initiatives required to transform the process from the current state to the desired future state.
The key elements of this exercise were to ensure everyone was 'seeing' the entire system and not just their own department and that the focus wasn't on any department or individual but on the client; the student.
Results
The results to date have been impressive. Algonquin College clients have experienced a number of positive outcomes as the result of the recent identification and implementation of many process improvements. These outcomes include, but are not limited to, the following:
Shortened Delivery Times
Service Quality Improvements
Increased Revenues
Process Improvements
Reduced Wait Times
Product Quality Improvements
Decreased Costs
Creating a Culture of Continuous Improvement
From the outset, the focus has been on the client and each successful improvement of these cross-departmental processes has been realized through the collective effort of many individuals working in a collaborative way. To date, both academic and administrative staffs working on this initiative have received traning in Lean methods.
e-Business Supply Chain Management Program
The 4th year students in the e-Business Supply Chain management program were provided expert instruction from Lean Advisors. The students participated in simulations and hands-on exercises to apply and visualize LEAN concepts. This gave the students the ability to look at any business organization and understand how they can help transform companies to be more competitive, customer focused and flexible.
Student teams were required to create current and future state maps and implementation plans for actual College processes. The project received enthusiastic support from College managers and, in the end, 5 student projects were selected. They applied the knowledge they had learned to Ancillary Services, Residence, Centre for Students with Disabilities, Financial Aid, and the Students' Association areas. This was a win-win-win. College administrators had a positive impact on the learning environment; the students gained the practical, hands-on experience and confidence necessary for the workplace application of these skills; and, the learning environment made a positive impact on the College's business processes.
Next Steps
The Steering Committee is currently developing an overall strategy for a College-wide implementation of Lean. Student support processes have been identified for the next phase of reviews and discussions have been initiated with managers responsible for these activities. The identification and training of participants will be conducted over the next 2 months and the iterative implementation of improvements will begin thereafter. These student support processes currently fall under Student Services, Ancillary Services, Information Technology Services, the Students' Association and Physical Resources.
Conclusion
Algonquin College is committed to continuously improving the College using the Lean approach. Their focus continues to be their clients and in meeting or exceeding their ever-changing, ever-evolving expectations. Congratulations to all who participated in this successful initiative. It is the implementation of these positive and sustainable process improvements which will continue to have an impact on the future of Algonquin College and will position the College as a model for all other educational institutes which desire to be the best
Streamlining The Administrative Process
By: Sabine Platzer-Gibbins (As Published in Algonquin Times)
Ever had to wait in the line-up at the registrar's office, fill out a bunch of forms, and wait weeks before receiving your timetable? Students may not have to do this again as a new plan is under way. The goal is to provide more efficient services to free up time for administration to provide more value to students.
Lean, Algonquin's new way of thinking and doing business, was presented to the Board of Governors by Mike Rushton, director of physical resources, and registrar Deborah Rowan-Legg. Lean is an end-to-end review of a process created to increase academic value for students in terms of registration, application, admission, and tuition to ensure they receive the best possible service. Lean is about streamlining resources to add value for students and eliminating waste. Waste is considered to be any activity which unnecessarily consumes resources. We're to focus on what students are getting from this," said Deborah Rowan-Legg. We mapped out how it is going to work and went to those places to observe the process."
The Lean Method
The Lean method was adopted from Lean Advisors. In the college's case, it's about providing more value to the students," said Larry Coté, president and CEO of Lean Advisors. Your tuition fees and monies used to run the college would be focused more on the client needs throughout the college system," Coté said. An example would be the registration process. There are so many steps involved throughout the registration process. We need to be able to see which steps are value and non-value and then put together a solid implementation plan to remove the non-value," Coté said.
In theory the student and taxpayer are really paying for all those steps. To better understand the Lean operations, Coté likened the Lean method to the making of a can of Cola. Most of what happens to a can would be considered waste from the customer's perspective. It takes 400 days to produce a can of Cola. We pay for everything the soft drink can is made out of and all the storage, transportation and handling. But as a consumer, we are forced to pay for all the costs incurred in getting that can to us, and most of the costs we consider waste." said Coté.
The Lean Strategy
The Lean strategy operates mainly on the concept of continuous flow, where the product or service is constantly adjusted to meet customer needs. In an office setting, a person may wait until they have a pile of forms before moving them to the next step in the process. When this type of method of production is duplicated throughout the entire process, then the product or service takes an extremely longer time for the service to go from start to finish," said Coté. This is called lead time. It is important to measure this time and understand how it can be reduced.
This is where we look at the entire Value Stream and determine what is waste and value," Coté said.
Rowan-Legg added the fact this operation will let them revise and perfect each of the steps. Rather than focusing on individual departments, the end-to-end view will allow them to see the whole picture and know to make improvements where necessary. This Value Stream approach initially came about in January to implement this at the college.
The Benefits
The recommendation for Lean was suggested by the e-business supply chain management program, offered in the School of Business at the college. The program includes a course called Lean in its curriculum. Not too long after, a team of 20 members from different departments in the school were recruited. The benefits of working together as a team from Rowan-Legg's perspective are that members will see how their pieces of work can interact with others in the college environment during this pilot process. It's not an easy thing to do. You have to have passion, the right knowledge, a plan, and you need to execute the plan. If you don't and you miss any of these important elements, then it won't work," said Cote.
A 6 day workshop was held for team members to better understand the method. Lean has been implemented in the service industries, most notably the automotive industry and, including most recently, healthcare and hospitals/laboratories in the U.S. This Lean method is designed to create a positive environment for students when it comes to applying at the college. Come April, the team will decide what steps to do first in this large process.