Contact:
Adam Stoehr
VP Education and Research
Excellence Canada
416–251-7600 or 800-263-9648 | adam@excellence.ca

Lean Advisors Inc., Intersol Group Ltd. and Excellence Canada develop alliance to help Canadian governments and corporations become world-class leaders.

OTTAWA – March 23, 2015 – Today Lean Advisors, Intersol Group and Excellence Canada announced a joint partnership to support public and private sector organizations to achieve excellence through a sustainable, integrated approach to running their operations.
Canada survived the economic downturn of 2008 and is now poised to compete with the world. But, in order to compete, Canadian industry and government must become ‘world-class’ organizations. And ‘world-class’ is not about being the biggest or having control of the major markets. It’s about being able to meet the ever-increasing demands placed on them by their clients, stakeholders and competitors. The goal is to be able to provide services and products better, faster and at less cost while improving staff engagement and involvement in the required changes. If they are successful they will become ‘world-class’ and will become global leaders and models for the future to the benefit of all.

The road to success will require a multi-faceted strategy. No one tool or area of focus will be enough. They will need three (3) things:

1) a Well-defined Standard which can be conveyed to all staff,
2) a Solid, Proven Process Transformation Methodology and,
3) a Change Management Approach that is effective across all leadership and staff.

To achieve this goal, Excellence Canada, Intersol Group Ltd. and Lean Advisors Inc. have formed an alliance that will be able to support any public or private sector organization in pursuing these key strategic elements. “Our clients now have the ability to tap into expertise for any of their needs as they progress on their journeys to Excellence, said Adam Stoehr, Vice President of Education and Research, Excellence Canada. Canada has been in need of this type of integration of expertise and credibility for a long time. Now it’s here!”

“Now organizations will be able to set a strategic vision and communicate that direction to support all staff and provide the knowledge and tools required to successfully create the change needed to become best-in-class”, said Larry Coté, President & CEO, Intersol Group and
Lean Advisors Inc.

Intersol Group with its 25 years of experience and professional staff assisting groups, large and small, on how to engage staff, align strategy and drive common, supported direction.

Lean Advisors Inc. with over 30 years of experience coaching, teaching and adapting Lean (process transformation) in all sectors.
Excellence Canada (formerly the National Quality Institute) with over 30 years of experience improving performance through coaching, teaching and recognizing Excellence with the prestigious Canada Awards for Excellence.

The future vision is attainable by those exceptional organizations that want to lead. This partnership is now capable of supporting, coaching, training and officially recognizing all phases of success through an entire journey to becoming ‘World-Class’.

About Lean Advisors, Inc.
Lean Advisors, Inc. is one of the most respected Lean consulting groups in North America. Lean Advisors, Inc., founded over 14 years ago and based in North America, has built a team of senior consultants with hands-on experience in a variety of sectors. In addition to their work with industry, the company has led the way to successful Lean practice in fields such as Healthcare, Education, Government and Manufacturing.
Our senior consultants’ mastery of Lean and Kaizen methods, combined with hands-on industry experience, has prepared them for tough ‘real world’ issues such as resistance, outside perceptions, conflicting agendas, and the need for senior management support. They help individuals become Lean leaders within their organizations as they overcome resistance to change and instill a Lean culture of continuous improvement. To learn more, please visitwww.leanadvisors.com

About Intersol Group Ltd.
Intersol Group Ltd. is a bilingual team of experienced consulting, facilitation and learning professionals whose expertise lies in harnessing and building lasting organizational capacity for its clients. Since 1989, the Intersol team has successfully delivered over 6,000 projects to hundreds of public sector, private sector and non-profit organizations across Canada.
Whether the focus is on shaping vision and strategy, on managing change, on stakeholder consultation, or on high performance teamwork, Intersol helps organizations leverage the knowledge, experience and expertise inherent in their own people.
Using processes, methods and tools that engage people to collaborate effectively and efficiently, we work with clients in the areas Stakeholder Engagement and Public Involvement; Direction Setting and Organizational Effectiveness; and Individual Effectiveness and Workplace Learning. To learn more, please visit www.intersol.ca

About Excellence Canada (formerly the National Quality Institute)
Excellence Canada is an independent, not-for-profit organization that is committed to advancing organizational excellence across Canada. Excellence Canada has helped thousands of organizations become cultures of continuous quality improvement and world-class role models, through its four-level Progressive Excellence Program.

As a national authority on Quality and Healthy Workplace®, Excellence Canada provides excellence frameworks, standards, and independent verification and certification to organizations of all sizes and in all sectors. It is also the custodian and adjudicator of the prestigious Canada Awards for Excellence program, of which the Patron is His Excellency, the Right Honourable David Johnston, C.C., C.M.M., C.O.M., C.D., Governor General of Canada. To learn more, please visit www.excellence.ca

Following are some typical questions we often receive about LEAN:

1. What is LEAN? LEAN is not a tool. LEAN is a unique way of thinking about how to assess and improve processes with a primary purpose of increasing value to clients.  When implemented properly, LEAN thinking will work for any process or organization that is looking to ‘do more with what they have’, in addition to adding value by improving quality, service and speed of delivery.
2. How is LEAN a solution? LEAN is an all-encompassing, strategic and tactical solution that engages staff to create an environment of client-focused energy to continuously provide value.  It breaks down the barriers between departments and develops a cohesive organization that moves in a common direction, constantly providing more value without increasing client costs.  LEAN enables public sector agencies to work more effectively and efficiently as a team by eliminating waste in their processes.
3. What impact will LEAN have if done properly? Numerous public sector organisations are using LEAN methods to dramatically improve the quality, service, and speed of their processes. The results have been impressive.

Here are some typical results that have been attained by various government groups:

• 25 – 100% increase in capacity without adding resources or working harder;
• 25 – 50% improvement in quality and customer satisfaction;
• 25 – 100% improvement in financial performance;
• Increased employee engagement and reduced firefighting and stress – staff are focused on devoting more time and resources to their core business and competencies.

The LEAN culture works to change the sorts of attitudes that create wasteful, ‘silo’ behaviours and interdepartmental friction. As a result, workloads become more balanced, fluctuations in pressures are reduced, and employees become more engaged as they participate in the improvements. Our government is continually being asked to do more with less.  Intersol combines its knowledge and expertise in Change Management with LEAN to provide a powerful solution to the challenge.

By Larry Cote, President Lean Advisors Inc

In the past few years there have been rumblings from the North American manufacturing community about the desire to return some of their manufacturing to North America.

There have been many changes in the economics and the markets since the early 90s both here and in Asia (China specifically).  Some of those changes are that China’s economic environment has evolved and grown.  As it happens in every economy, growth and competition puts pressures on the cost of doing business, the infrastructure of transportation/logistics of shipping higher volumes and more products becomes stressed.

In the meantime while this evolution has been happening in China, North American productivity has improved, especially in the US through technology and advancements in process thinking.  All these factors (and many more) have caused CEOs of manufacturing companies to reassess the decisions that they made a decade or two ago to move production overseas.  They are realizing that it may be more profitable now to do some of their manufacturing here on this continent.

This opportunity should not be missed by Canada or the US.

Management teams must first recognize that they can be competitive in quality, cost and speed of supply.  Once this realization is made then they quickly must re-examine the importance of dramatically and quickly transforming their current methods and thinking – both culturally (value thinking) and processing.  We must not kid ourselves, this opportunity to take advantage of ‘repatriation’ or ‘re-shoring’ will not last long.   CEOs are constantly searching for the next place to invest, where they can drive profits and a better ROI.

The one solution that is being touted for attracting manufacturing back to North American soil is to adopt the latest technology as well as investing in innovation.  This is a simple solution that on the surface is an obvious statement to make.  The reality though, is that over the past decade, our margins have been squeezed so tight that survival has been the primary focus.  In this scenario, very little money can be freed up to buy new technology let alone spend time on research and innovation.  So, what do we do??

Our belief is that expensive technology should not be the first step in becoming attractive to foreign business.  Technology should be the second step in turning around your company.  “Leaning out” your existing processes is the first step and will give you the knowledge and understanding of what technology you really require and should invest in.

Initially, North American organizations should be focused on ensuring their current processes are ‘waste’ free.  Without this customer focus of ‘value’ as the major driver of the corporate strategy, we will miss the opportunity to attract the manufacturing industry we lost to foreign countries over the past few decades.  This “leaning out” will also give organizations the profits they need to move to the next phase, which is purchasing new technology.

I know this sounds like the same old preaching Lean has been teaching since the mid 90s, but ‘off-shoring’ of manufacturing began well before Lean could have an impact.  Now we’ve had the past 15 years to become experts – let’s call the last 15 years ‘practice time’ – and we are ready to actually demonstrate to the world that North America is the place to invest if you want the best quality, service and cost.

Manufacturing is the backbone of our economy.  Let’s not miss this small window of opportunity to bring back some of the manufacturing we lost and even to develop new opportunities for growth.  We have been given a second chance, let’s not miss out!!

A very commonly-implemented intervention when attempting to “mistake-proof” a process involving humans is the double-check.

Double-checks are, by their nature, waste.  Often, double-checks are put in place as temporary stop-gap measures while more effective, value-adding countermeasures are devised and implemented.  While a perfectly-implemented double-check does indeed improve error rate, it does not come close to serving as effectively as a prevention-based mistake proof device (poka yoke) and should therefore be considered a weak intervention.

The prevailing theory behind a double-check is that, while a person will occasionally err when undertaking a task, with probability A, the process will be made more robust by inserting a double-check of the work of the original person.  The presumption is that the person doing the double-check will also occasionally err, with probability B, but that the combined probability of error emanating from the double-checked task will be geometrically lower (improved).  For example if the error rates of the original person performing the task is 10% (A=0.10) and the error rate of the double-checker is 15% (B = 0.15), the combined error rate of the double-checked process is now (0.10)(0.15)=0.015, nearly an order of magnitude improvement.

Actual results of such interventions in practice rarely match the theoretical improvement.  By understanding the factors leading to gaps in performance of double-checks, we can set out to implement double-checks in such a manner that efficacy is enhanced.

Factors leading to sub-optimal performance of a double-check

Often, a double-check step is inserted into a process “on the fly” without thoughtful planning to eliminate possible failure modes of the check itself.  Following are some common situations to avoid when considering a double-check for your process.

• Lack of clear definition (standard work) of how the double-check is to be performed
• Ineffective training of staff who are to perform the double-check
• Failure to design an independent double-check; one that only involves the person originating the work has a high likelihood of error due to confirmation bias, which can blind the person performing a check on his/her own work .
• When a second person is assigned to perform the double-check, confirmation bias can blind this person.  This can be caused by specific information being passed from the first to the second person prior to validation, the second person subconsciously deferring to the authority of the first person, or simply trusting that the first person could not have erred.  Any of this leads to the second person missing errors.
• Creeping complacency, due to a person knowing that someone else is in place to catch any mistakes he or she will make
• Interruptions during the double-check
• Rushing the double-check

Related, and equally common, is the issue of nobody being tasked with examining errors caught during the double-check and using that insight to drive focused root cause analysis and interventions upstream to eliminate as many of these failure modes as possible.

What can you do?

1. Assess and analyze any double-checks you already have in place.  Look for evidence of any of the above issues.  Ask to see the data showing what errors are being found.  Investigate what actions have been initiated as a result.
2. Before assuming that a double-check is the strongest mistake-proof device (poka yoke) that can be designed and implemented for a particular task within a given value stream, challenge yourself and your team to seek out stronger interventions.  Estimate the relative strength between multiple intervention ideas.
3. Where a double-check is the only course of action, either for the short term or for a longer time period, infuse these design principles:

• independence of the check, separated by time and space if possible to mitigate risk of “contaminating” the checker with information about the person originating the work, inputs, outputs, calculations, and judgement applied
• to simplify and make visual the double-check, create a checklist showing the specific steps to be undertaken
• create a physical environment for the double-check that will be free from distraction and which will make the task simplest
• carefully document the standard work, train those involved, and assess skill/capability of those who will be performing the check
• avoid having the same two people serving as checkee-checker on a sustained basis
• periodically assess efficacy of the check, in a blinded fashion and provide feedback
• instrument your check and specify roles to include those who will prepare, analyze, and act upon the errors caught by the check

4.   Seek to continually improve, through successive cycles of mistake proofing, until you can evolve beyond the use of double-checking

In his first year as President of the UTPA, Dr. Robert Nelsen recognized this challenge right away. He had a transformative vision for his University which required improved responsiveness in administrative functions, without any increase in cost. The university had focused on improving the quality of its curriculum and educational resources without giving much thought to the transactional business functions. Until now, they simply had not been a priority. For him to accomplish his vision, Dr. Nelsen simply could not ask for more money from the UT program, he had to find a way to get more out of the resources he already had. Dr. Nelsen was familiar with the concept of LEAN at an enterprise level, and suspected he could achieve his goals through the identification and elimination of waste and improvement in the flow of tasks. He discussed this idea with an industry colleague, George Reynolds, a pioneer in developing lean transactional processes and formerly employed by Northrop Grumman Corporation as their Director of University Programs and Process Improvement. George agreed to provide some training and assistance to UTPA. After some discussion, both parties agreed to look at the procurement process at UTPA, and establish it as a test case to see if the lean methodology would “work” in an academic environment, and also to see whether it was possible to train UTPA staff to use lean methodology, so that they could continue to make improvements after the Northrop Grumman team left.

In October, 2010, George brought along a Master Black Belt to help observe the procurement process and facilitate a three day Value Stream Mapping event, focused primarily on the procurement process. A VSM, or “Value Stream Map” is a visual representation of a process that is intended to deliver value to a customer. It provides a structured approach for “seeing” the sequence of events required to deliver customer value and defines how each step in the process impacts what the customer values. The VSM shows how the processes link together in a ‘value chain’ and the map provides a way of “seeing” opportunities to minimize waste and improve process performance. The real strength of the VSM approach is in gathering people from different disciplines to see and talk about the flow of processes in a common language, and at a common contextual level. Once the problems are seen in the context of the overall process flow, their impact on performance can be measured, and countermeasures/improvements can be made. This effort using the VSM culminates in designing a detailed Future State Plan and vision to move forward.

The UTPA team went right to work, embracing the idea that they had control of their own destiny. The team quickly outlined the process they intended to improve (2), connecting each process step and output to a customer. This outline framed the starting and stopping points for a more detailed look at the procurement process, which the team mapped in great detail (3). With this detailed view of the process, the team was able to identify the “friction points” in the process – the things that got in the way and slowed things down.

The more detailed map also allowed the team to measure the individual process steps from a time standpoint. As part of the VSM process used by George’s team, the relative variation in time associated with the “friction” in the process was also measured. The facilitator used this specific measure of time and variation to create a Monte Carlo simulation of the time spent in the procurement process, and the relative impact of the variation in time as it impacts the overall process lead time. The marriage of visual representation of the process friction (pain points), and modeled impact on overall lead time helped the UTPA team focus on the “most important” things to work on. They spent almost a day of their time together coming up with, and prioritizing improvement ideas to make the procurement process “better”. While there were dozens of ideas for improvement, the team was able to resolve that all the ideas centered on five basic themes:

1. Lack of Visibility for information
2. Lack of Flow – process stops without warning and waits
3. Choosing the Wrong Path / Routing Errors
4. Training / Insufficient Knowledge – the people involved with the process just were not sure what to do.
5. Infrastructure – The tools (hardware and software) were not adequate to support the procurement needs.

The final day of the three- day VSM process was used to synthesize the process improvement ideas into specific actions (“WHO is going to do WHAT by WHEN”). This involved a lot of discussion, trade-offs, negotiation and estimation of costs and impacts, and is always much more intensive than it sounds. With each improvement idea, the team estimated the relative impact the “fix” would have on the overall procurement lead time, and a “future state” Monte Carlo simulation was used to model the overall expected impact on performance. The ability to visually model the impact allowed the team to focus on solutions that involved the most “bang for the buck”. At the end of the third day, the UTPA team was exhausted, but satisfied. They had addressed the specific changes they needed to make to the process, each dealing with manageable actions that are summarized below.

• Visibility – Understanding where the information is, who has it, and the status of the process
• Priority – Understanding which tasks are more important than others
• Trigger – How to signal that work needs to be done, or that additional emphasis/priority is needed to keep the procurement moving forward
• Handoffs – Minimize the “in box / out box” waits from handing tasks back and forth to different functional organizations. Maximize the amount of work that can be accomplished at one time by each group.
• Delegate – Trust others to accomplish their jobs, and hold them accountable for success
• Metrics – Measure the current process to establish how well it services the stakeholder’s needs
• Better Tools – Improve the ability to flow work, provide priority and visibility and extract information out of the Oracle Database
• Organizational Efficiency – Reorganize the group to be more efficient. House complementary functions under the same organization

The impact of improvement impact was re-modeled using the Monte Carlo approach, and the “Future State” process time was compared to the Current State. Improvements to specific process paths were modeled to be ~ 30% (5), except for the Sole Provider Procurement process, which involved improvements that were out of scope for this initial effort.

At each step of the process, the facilitator instructed the team about the theories of lean and continuous improvement that were used. He further taught the practitioners how to created and model their own maps, so they could continue to develop their improvement skills without the need to bring in expensive consultants each time. As highly engaged and intelligent groups often do, they embraced the concepts of the process improvement paradigm, and diligently went off and worked the action items. Within a few months, the team had met the expectations of the modeled performance, but saw the opportunity to do even more. They met with smaller teams, and continued the process of problem identification and problem resolution. Without increasing costs or headcount, they were able to bring the lead time for the procurement process down by almost 50%!

What happened next was even better – the UTPA staff became encouraged by the success they experienced in the procurement process, and started to map other elements of the administrative and transactional processes. While not every process was capable of a 50% reduction in lead time, each process was capable of being made better without adding more cost or resources. In fact, there was no magic to the improvement effort itself, it was the result of key stakeholders paying attention to what was happening, assessing the current state information, identifying the problems and simply deciding to do things a little better. We call this type of change “continuous improvement”, and it enables us to get control of the seemingly chaotic things that make it difficult for us to succeed at work.

Dr. Nelsen states: “It was the little things that made a big difference. Once we really started looking, we started seeing. Once we saw, we asked questions and then really listened to the people working in the process. They had the answers; we just needed a way to get to them – after that, knowing how to act was much easier. The Continuous Improvement folks helped us figure out what to measure, where to look, and how to listen, it was a great help.”

He goes on to note: “We have a long way to go to get where we want to be. But this is a great start, and now we know that we can ‘get there from here’.”

Yes, good things ARE happening at the University of Texas Pan American. Small improvements add together incrementally, and lead to big changes. According to George Reynolds, the former Director of University Relations and Process Improvement at Northrop Grumman : “All we need are good people, the desire to look, the patience to listen and the guts to act.”

First, let’s alleviate the misconception, apprehension or anxiety that Lean doesn’t work.  It does work!

The caveat is that you must discover the ‘right’ or proper adaptation of the thinking and concept to  your unique situation!

Once you have acknowledged the above, you can then begin to search for the proper solution and resources to lead your Lean Transformation.

Chances are you will try to find the expert internally first and then if you feel you don’t have the internal expert, or need additional resources or guidance, you will go outside your organization to either hire someone or find a credible consultant.

The problem with trying to select the expert talent is that you may feel a little hesitant as you may not know what to look for (or not look for) in an individual in order to make this important decision.

This decision becomes even more stressful because you know that you get one chance to make the right decision and that if you select the wrong person(s), you alone are responsible for taking your organization down the wrong path and it is extremely difficult to start again.  We acknowledge that much of this confusion has been caused by consultants and trainers that have misguided their clients and/or students and given them the incorrect or incomplete knowledge which in turn the leadership unknowingly uses to select what and who they need to guide them.

So we thought it might be helpful in this post to at least highlight some of the red flags to be aware of when hiring a person(s) to lead the change in your organization and that you are willing to put your reputation on the line for.

Here is a list of some of those Red Flags to keep in mind when deciding on the expertise you are looking to engage:

1)      The transformation costs tons of dollars.

2)      The person doesn’t know the difference between Process and Value Stream Mapping and where both are critical.

3)      They speak about tools instead of cultural change.

4)      They have a solution prior to properly assessing the situation.

5)      They will do it for you – your staff won’t be that involved, the staff only have to utilize the changes once the consultant is done.

6)      They use the word ‘bottleneck’ or project to focus on one area.

7)      They call it Lean Sigma and it is really mostly Six Sigma (a tool).

8)      They use a matrix type chart to determine the priority of projects i.e. the one axis is normally large and little impact and then the other axis is little or most effort.

9)      They give you a long list of projects to assign to staff or themselves with no sequencing analysis.

10)   Their plan requires them to be on-site for, what seems like, an unreasonable length of time.

These are only some of the Red Flags you should keep in mind.  If you ‘see’ any of these types of ‘flags’, take notice and do some additional analysis and research into the credentials and approach.  Doing this analysis properly could save you years of regret, not to mention thousands of dollars, and in the end- frustration and disappointment not just for you but for your entire staff.

Lean does work when implemented properly!  The challenge for you is to choose the distinctive and effective adaptation of the theory that is right for your environment/situation that will not only transform your processes but also transform your culture into a sustainable continuous improvement organization.

For more information, contact us at corp@leanadvisors.com.

Challenge: Not all senior leaders have the vision, understanding and/or have “bought in” to making Lean a priority.

This is one of the critical steps and foundation blocks that must be in place to ensure the success of any Lean Transformation and Organizational Culture Change.

Root Cause: In our brainstorming sessions, the following were identified as some of the possible reasons this occurs.

• Lack of Knowledge/Education about what lean truly is and its benefits.
• Not aligned with Strategic Goals
• No clear metrics or goals associated
• Unclear about the Return on Investment
• Lack of ongoing communication
• Cultural issues internally
• Conflicting priorities
• Control
• Trust
• Resources to support and sustain lean
• Fear of this being just another “flavour of the month”

Each root cause listed above impacts leadership support and each one of those challenges requires an investigation to determine what would need to be in place to most effectively address them.

Possible Solutions:

Some of the possible solutions or ideas that could help to begin to address the challenge of achieving Senior Leadership buy in were as follows:

• Help Senior Leadership understand the value and overall system impact to create the vision
• Learn to speak the language of the Sr Leadership team and what is important to them
• Demonstrate the ROI of Lean through metrics meaningful to Leaders and its Strategic Alignment within the Organization
• Create capacity with staff and allocate resources to support the vision
• Create small wins which tie into the larger picture and work towards winning over naysayers
• Establish Goals and Focused Scope of Project
• Within you sphere of influence, create a pro-active and empowered culture

These are some of the potential solutions that were identified from our session and are worthy of investigation and strategy. Lean Advisors employs senior consultants who are veterans in the industries they serve. To learn more about how we can help you make your organization everything that it can be, contact us.

The federal government’s overhaul of Canada’s refugee determination system is driving the Immigration and Refugee Board to embrace business efficiency practices pioneered six decades ago by Japanese automaker Toyota.

Ahead of the expected December implementation of the Protecting Canada’s Immigration System Act, the IRB is turning to “Lean” processes that it hopes will enable it to deal with refugee applications and appeals much more expeditiously.

The new law imposes tight statutory time frames for the board to hear and decide applications and appeals. Whereas it now takes an average of 19 months for the IRB’s refugee protection division to complete an initial hearing, the revised system requires that to be done within 30 to 60 days.

For those whose claims are denied, a new refugee appeal division must hear cases within 60 to 90 days, and reach decisions in as little as 30 days. Further complicating the IRB’s task is a backlog of more than 38,000 refugee claims it has yet to deal with.

“Compliance with these time frames requires the IRB to transform the way it operates so that it can hear and decide refugee claims and appeals much faster that is currently the case,” the board says in an email, adding that a Lean transformation is “particularly appropriate for an organization undergoing fundamental change.”

In a nutshell, Lean practices identify and eliminate all activities in a process that don’t add value for the intended customer. The result can be dramatic improvements in efficiency.

The IRB started down the Lean road in late 2010 following passage of an earlier government initiative, the Balance Refugee Reform Act. Earlier this month, spurred on by the latest reforms, it advertised for a consultant to “facilitate Lean business process improvements.”

The goal, the IRB said, is to “yield a sustainable refugee determination process that will meet the legislated timelines while ensuring that cases are dealt with efficiently, fairly and in accordance with the law.”

While Lean practices are still relatively rare in Canada’s public sector, they are becoming more common as government departments and agencies grapple with shrinking resources coupled with steady or growing demand for services.

Canada Post adopted Lean nearly two decades ago and the Royal Canadian Mint has been doing the same for nearly a decade. The Export Development Corporation and Passport Canada are also on a Lean diet.

But the Canadian leader in Lean is the government of Saskatchewan. After the Lean approach saved millions of dollars and cut wait times for treatment in the province’s health-care system, Premier Brad Wall expanded the initiative to all government ministries in 2010. Earlier this year, he even appointed a cabinet minister, Nancy Heppner, with specific responsibility for the Lean initiative.

Despite their roots in manufacturing, Lean ideas are readily transferable to any public sector process that involves multiple steps, says Mike Miles, director of the MBA program at the University of Ottawa’s Telfer School of Management.

“Any approach that forces people to sit down and ask themselves the question, ‘Where are we wasting time, money and energy,’ that’s a good process,” he says.

At the Mint, Lean practices cut the time to develop a new product in half, doubled the throughput of coins in some areas and simplified many steps and processes. Lean also helped the Mint transform a $3-million loss in 2003 into a record $68-million profit in 2009.

In case you missed it, we invite you to take a few minutes to watch the recorded webinar so that you have the opportunity to benefit from the valuable content that was shared.

Click Here to View

Managers, Supervisors, Team Leaders have challenging jobs! They are fighting fires while responding to pressures from both the organization above and staff below. Meanwhile, they are being told to cut costs, improve quality and improve service.

With so little hours in a day, where do they find the time?

“Management Capacity:  Creating Standard Leadership Roles for the Lean Supervisor.” Mike Boucher, our Vice President of Client Services, will share his insights.

We will show you how to free up management time by understanding executive priorities and analyzing management activities, creating Standard Leadership Roles.

To learn more about our Management Capacity Program, click here.