Lean is a journey of continuous improvement and throughout their journey, Lean Advisors has introduced Lean thinking and applications at the day to day operational level through Enterprise Value Stream Mapping as well as at the strategic, business planning level through Hoshin Planning. That enterprise level of commitment is delivering results in terms of improved efficiency, productivity, staff engagement and most importantly with increased client satisfaction.

Here is their story:

In 2008, The Saskatchewan Assessment Management Agency (SAMA) adopted the Lean business process improvement strategy.  SAMA is responsible for the governance of the overall assessment system in Saskatchewan, and the provision of assessment services to our 756 client municipalities.  The Agency provides a financial foundation for municipalities and the education sector that they can use to establish and sustain local programs and services.

Lean is aimed at engaging the talents of the Agency’s people to eliminate waste, and create value for our customers.  With an ever-increasing workload and limited resources, Lean helps to ensure that SAMA’s clients’ and stakeholders’ needs are successfully met.

Thanks to the commitment of staff and Senior Management, SAMA is involving people throughout the Agency to tackle some of the challenges affecting the property assessment system in Saskatchewan.

“One of Lean’s strengths is its focus: the people most familiar with the actual work determine the necessary process improvements and plan the necessary changes,” said SAMA CEO Irwin Blank.  “The Agency has achieved significant progress to date, and Lean process improvement initiatives will continue to be a focus for SAMA in 2013 and beyond.”

Because the Agency looks for input from staff and management in all eight of our regional offices across the province, as well as our central office in Regina, the Agency has opted to train all staff and managers in Lean processes.  Staff all receive Introduction to Lean training, and many staff have received further training in Lean processes and change management.  The Agency currently has 14 certified Green Belts, and 5 certified Black Belts.  There are an additional four certified Green Belts who are currently Black Belt candidates, as well as another 14 Green Belt candidates.  Six of SAMA’s Executives have also completed Green Belt training.

To help guide and steer the Agency’s Lean journey, SAMA uses value stream mapping to improve the Lean process.  One of these improvements was to develop a Lean Manual.  The manual outlines details on creating and managing value streams, organizing and executing Rapid Improvement Events and the roles and responsibilities of staff, value stream leaders, facilitators and others.  All staff can access the manual on SAMA’s intranet system.

SAMA currently has several value stream maps in progress representing the different areas of focus within the Agency. For the operations area (Assessment Services) SAMA has value streams for Data Verification, Revaluation, Support of Value and Industrial Assessments.  For the Agency’s support divisions SAMA has value streams for Revaluation Governance, Finance, Quality Assurance, Human Resources and Agency Planning.

SAMA’s original Lean goals were:

• A 25% increase in efficiency and productivity between 2009 and 2013;

• Highly engaged staff, that take ownership of the business processes; and

• An Agency in a much better position to meet the increasing demands from clients.

Under the Lean initiative the Agency has:

• Advanced the Agency’s annual property maintenance program by 3-4 months and in 2012 completed the work for 62% of our client municipalities by December 31^st.  In comparison, only 14% of client municipalities received their annual property maintenance by December 31^st in 2009.  Property maintenance occurs when municipalities request SAMA to do on-site inspections of specific individual properties, usually where significant developments or changes have been made that have altered the physical data on  a property.

• Increased property reinspection productivity 57% over four years from 761 properties per appraiser Full Time Equivalent (FTE) in 2008 to 1,198 properties per appraiser FTE in 2012.  Periodically, municipalities must have all their properties reinspected on-site to verify that physical data and valuations are accurate.

• Made changes to sales verification, market analysis and support of value processes and reduced total appraiser time to complete the 2009-2012 revaluation cycle by 28.1 FTEs or 22% – an average of 7.0 FTEs for each year of the program.  Sales verification and market analysis are two key components of the Agency’s revaluation work that happens on a four year cycle. SAMA is also required to participate in property appeals and provide full disclosure of how property values are determined. This responsibility for openness and full disclosure is part of what SAMA calls “support of value.”

SAMA’s 2014 to 2017 Lean goals are:

• Increase the number of properties that an appraiser can review by 80% from 1,029 to 1,850 properties annually using Lean business process and technology improvements.
• Double the number of properties that an appraiser can reinspect from 1,050 to 2,100 properties annually using Lean business process and technology improvements.
• Utilize Lean value-stream mapping events and other tools to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of work processes.
• Improve the efficiency and productivity of annual maintenance processes resulting in the reallocation of 14 FTEs to the property reinspection program by 2018.
• Based on continued significant growth expected in Saskatchewan’s energy and minerals sectors, the agency will progressively double the capacity of our industrial program by 2017.  Lean process improvements, software upgrades, cost model simplification and remote data collection tablets will improve the efficiency of the industrial property assessment program by 25%.

• Efficiencies will be attained in delivery of the revaluation and annual maintenance programs that will allow the reassignment of critical appraiser resources to the reinspection program – increasing the agency’s average capacity for reinspections from 8 FTEs in 2013 to 27 FTEs annually by 2018.

The agency will continue to build on the Lean improvements attained over the past five years. The plan takes a long term and careful approach to innovative new business processes, and it invests in technology to ensure the sustainability of the property assessment base and municipal and education property tax revenues.

The focus for 2014-17 will be on sustaining current levels of service for our governance responsibilities, continuing to improve the delivery of assessment valuation services to our clients, and building the capacity to enable the Agency to reinspect all properties at least once every 12 years.

SAMA’s Lean journey has been one of trial and error and learning from our missteps.  The Agency’s Lean transformation has required this learning process, which will ultimately help us move towards becoming a truly Lean organization. With a strong commitment and growing knowledge of Lean, SAMA is constantly looking for ways that Lean can influence and improve our everyday business, and in turn, help us provide our customers with the best service possible.

Principles and Techniques for Sustained Improvement

Thursday June 13th at 1PM Eastern.

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Mistake-Proofing (or Poka Yoke) prevents mistakes from being made or makes the mistake obvious at a glance, so that corrective action can be taken before a patient is harmed. It’s a common sense approach tocreate low-cost, effective design changes that reduce errors.

Brian Nass has worked in quality and continuous improvement for over 20 years.  He held several leadership positions at Mayo Clinic in Rochester including Executive Director of Continuous Improvement and COO of Lab Services. Most recently as VP, Performance Improvement at Mission Health System in North Carolina.

Learn techniques for eliminating defects, improving quality and streamlining work.

Brian will discuss mistake-proofing within the specific context of healthcare; however, this webinar is not specific to only the healthcare industry. Many examples and references will come from healthcare, however this webinar will benefit managers from all industries who want to better understand the widespread application of mistake-proofing. Join Us!

Register Today

Mobilizing Our Ingenuity Through Good Management.

In this video, Mike Rother shares valuable insights into the importance of ‘structured’ change methodology, called Kata.

At Lean Advisors, we believe Kata is the next major critical concept organizations need to grasp in order to create a sustainable transformation. Mike has uncovered, through his research with U of Michigan another important piece of the puzzle necessary for success and taking your team to the next level of competitiveness

Message from Larry Cote, President, Lean Advisors Inc.

I recently came across this video of Mike Rother who spoke at the Lean Summit in 2012. I had the privilege to work with Mike back when Lean was just gaining interest in the mid 90s.

At that time, much of Mike’s research and efforts were focused on Toyota and the primary transformational tool known as Value Stream Mapping (VSM).

We wanted to share this with our online community.

Lean Summit 2012 – Mike Rother – Toyota Kata

Visit www.leanadvisorsonline.com or Call  (877) 778-6413.

Endorsed by:

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.

Universities and Colleges represent an immense opportunity for the application of Lean Concepts. Lean Advisors Inc, Senior Advisor Sav Pota P.Eng, will share his insights on how Lean principles and practices apply to educational processes.  He will also provide highlights from his own experiences in higher education, including success examples, lessons learned, and advice on how to best engage university/college staff in order to create a culture of continuous process improvement to achieve the most effective and efficient results.

Date: February 28,2013

Time: 1300 – 1345 EST

Space is limited. REGISTER TODAY

About the Presenter:

Saverio (Sav) Pota P.Eng

With over 25 years of practical experience in various industries, both manufacturing and non-manufacturing, (healthcare, government, justice, logistics/distribution) Saverio (Sav) Pota has a unique ability to “make complicated systems simple” using Lean. His passion has always been to pass on this ability to adapt and apply Lean to challenging situations and to others.

Sav’s Lean experience includes many sectors – manufacturing, healthcare, college/educational institutes, government, design/architecture and service. From his early days in the electrical industry where traditional production management (e.g. EOQ and the big batch) was prevalent, he saw firsthand how North American companies latched onto individual concepts, such as Just In Time (JIT), which led to disappointment because benefits could not be sustained. Sav then worked in the Auto Industry where he was first indoctrinated in the Deming management philosophy. This led to an understanding on how company culture is a fundamental requirement for sustaining continuous improvement.

Subsequently, Sav worked for a major Crown Service Corporation where Lean was introduced as a new direction (a direction that lives on 15 years later).The basic principles of Lean, (Define Value, Map the Value Stream, Make in Flow, Pull and Perfection) became the driving force for both cost and service improvements. Mapping the Value Stream clearly identifies the end-to-end flows of a product or service and is paramount for any sustainable improvements. Sav also led a major initiative (Kaikaku) in a product processing overhaul, but more importantly he led a team of his peers in the development of a Value Stream Management organization. Sav believes that it is imperative to have internal value stream owners to ensure that Lean becomes imbedded into the culture of any organization.

Sav’s work continued into the private courier industry, where he planned and managed the start up of new facilities based on Lean principles. As a director at a major North American transportation company, he applied the concepts of Lean in the creation of their long-term vision. This vision was the guiding principle of their business transformation initiative.

Recently, he was part of the design team for the new Children’s Hospital in Saskatchewan. He led teams comprising of Ministry reps, Hospital leaders /staff and designers to analyze existing processes and establish new, more efficient , flexible flows throughout the facility that would be incorporated into the design of the future hospital.

Presently, he is working with several Health Regions in Ontario, College Administrations and Municipality Administrations to transform them using Lean.

As an owner/partner in a manufacturing company, Ontario, he has also managed to benefit from Lean principles. Significantly growing his own company over the years. This company has survived and thrived even throughout the latest recession.

A graduate of Industrial Engineering from the University of Toronto, Sav has furthered his professional development by keeping abreast of manufacturing management techniques by attending seminars and conferences. Sav even had the opportunity to attend a Deming seminar lectured by Dr. W. Edwards Deming. He led a presentation at the “Lean Summit” in Atlanta, Georgia, plus was asked to present at two other Lean Manufacturing Conferences hosted by the Institute for International Research. He was also a co-presenter, with his Lean Advisors colleague Mike Boucher, at the ASQ conference .

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!

Next, there is no one cookie-cutter solution that can be used to solve every situation and needs of an organization.  It is obvious, that every organization and every division in every organization has their own culture, leadership, and human dynamics which are distinctive to them.

So, in order for Lean to be effective, these nuances must be dealt with by altering the approach that is used to effectively create sustainable ongoing positive impact for the business, their clients and their staff.

Thirdly, Lean is not a tool!

Most organizations go into Lean thinking that if they learn the theory and five phases, or tools like 5S, Mistake-Proofing, flow, Six sigma etc., they just have to get everyone doing that across all the departments.  We have seen places that pick one tool and focus on it for years on end and expect to reach their potential.  It won’t work!

Lean is a cultural change that requires those tools but more importantly, it requires the leadership and staff to change the way they analyze and question their business and how they perceive their client’s needs (value).

Fourth, change won’t happen overnight – this is not a magical potion that will automatically cure what the organization have currently created and evolved into over the past years or decades.  Lean is a long term continuous journey (most say this but most still expect overnight success and then move on to the next thing).

Fifth, reading the books and being knowledgeable about the theory, tools and basics is not going to prepare you for leading a Lean implementation.

There are many more but let’s start with those as it gives you an idea of the significant foundational concepts you need to be aware of.

Once you have acknowledged the above, you can then begin to search for the proper solution.  Chances are you will try to find the expert internally first and then if you feel you don’t have the internal expert you go outside to either hire someone or find a credible consultant.

In Part 3, we will begin 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….

With the objectives being to reduce stress on staff while meeting higher demands, being more responsive and lowering the cost of care and determining the technological advancements/innovation needed to support the new improved processes well into the future.

The end-to-end process in several areas will be assessed and redesigned in order to improve the flow of information, communication and the patient throughout the ‘system’.

In 2008, the Montfort Hospital emergency room was one of the province’s worst. Its sickest patients waited up to 20 hours to be admitted. Patients complained and nurses quit. Morale was low and turnover was high. The nurses who remained were overworked and burnt out.

Occasionally, staff frustration boiled over; patients either left without being treated, or went public with stories about rude behaviour and substandard care. The hospital became a focus of negative headlines. “It was a crisis,” admits François Lemaire, Montfort’s clinical director of the ER.

These days, Montfort is no longer a laggard among Ontario’s busiest ERs. Its wait time for the sickest patients is 10 hours — half of what it was in 2008 — even though the volume of patients continues to rise. From 35,000 patients in 2008, the ER now treats 52,000 annually. Many of them are sicker and harder to treat than patients in the past. Yet despite these challenges, Montfort’s wait time continues to fall.

A recent survey of Ontario hospitals indicated that nine out of 10 patients would recommend Montfort’s emergency department to their family and friends. And the turnover in ER nurses is so low that there are currently no full-time openings — a dramatic change from 2008 when there were 15 vacant positions.

The turnaround, aided by $3.7 million in provincial funding since 2008, is one example of how Montfort says it has improved patient care by using practices made famous by Toyota. With the hospital-wide introduction of checklists, streamlining, standardization and non-stop brainstorming with front-line staff, Montfort has joined a growing number of acute-care centres in bringing the efficiency of a factory floor to health care.

The approach, known as lean, has long helped the auto and aerospace industries reduce waste and boost value for customers through continuous small improvements. With a cash-strapped government trying to rein in health spending, Ontario hospitals are catching up, spurred by provincial directives to do more with less.

Nowhere is the need for improved efficiency more critical than in emergency rooms, where speedy care is a key component of good care.

Montfort’s transformation began in January 2009, to teach its staff the lean principles. The hospital paid for the lean consultants with some of the $687,000 it received that year for ER improvement.

The money was part of a four-year, $400-million provincial program called Pay For Results. When it was launched in 2008, Montfort was among 23 of Ontario’s poorest-performing ERs to receive the funding, which gets clawed out of their annual budgets if they don’t show improvement.

Hospital staff deconstructed every aspect of how patients moved through the ER, from the time they arrived by ambulance or car until they were discharged. They examined the “flow” of patients — how they were assessed at triage, how they got their lab tests and diagnostic scans, how they were discharged or admitted and how information moved with them at each stage. They attacked the problem in the same way that factory managers studied the parts of an assembly line.

“We were a whole bunch of people with Post-it notes on the floor that showed all the different steps,” recalls Sophie Audet, an ER nurse. “After it was done, everybody looked at each other and started saying, ‘Oh my God. No wonder we’re so tired.’ There were so many steps. When you see it, you actually realize that.”

Audet and her colleagues worked to simplify the journey for patients and reduce unnecessary tasks for staff. To their surprise, the best ideas were not necessarily flashy, or expensive to implement.

Among other things, a daily activity report was introduced that gave every hospital worker — from the chief executive to department heads, physicians, nurses and housekeeping staff — a snapshot of the traffic in and out of Montfort. It listed the number of patients waiting to be admitted and discharged.

For the first time, staff got a bird’s-eye view of where the hospital’s bottlenecks were. They could also see which departments needed extra help to move patients along. “You see the big picture, not just your own little department,” says Audet.

In the ER, a low-tech whiteboard was introduced. It tracked the location and status of every patient and listed what services they were waiting for. For the first time, method and transparency were imposed, allowing the nursing team to manage patients more quickly and effectively. The approach also reduced the chances of patients being lost in the shuffle.

“Before, we used to write down everything by hand,” says Johanne Gougeon, the ER’s lead nurse. “Now, we write on magnets. If we have a patient go somewhere, we just move the magnet around. It’s on the board, it’s written out, it’s all standardized and everybody can see what’s happening.”

In addition, the triage process was simplified for patients with minor complaints. And the workflow of the diagnostic imaging department as well as the work schedules of housekeeping staff were adjusted to conform with the ER’s busiest times of the day.

Other changes related to inconveniences in the physical layout that added up to hours of lost productivity every day.

For example, the storage and labelling of medical supplies were standardized so that nurses did not waste precious time searching for surgical dressings or catheters. A method was introduced to manage wheelchairs, which were never available when staff needed them, leading to longer-than-necessary delays for patients waiting to be moved or discharged.

“We (drew) a line on the floor and we put up a sign: ‘Three wheelchairs here,’ ” says Lise Vaillancourt, director of clinical services. “All of a sudden, when somebody was done with a wheelchair, they knew what to do with it.”

Even a simple procedure like urine analysis often kept patients waiting because the fridge where the samples were stored was far from the nursing station. “We calculated that the nurse had to walk something like 150 steps and another 150 steps back an average of 75 times per day,” says Vaillancourt. “So we just took the fridge and put it under the counter. Now, it’s zero steps.”

Based on these seemingly minor improvements, ER wait times at Montfort fell by 10 per cent within three months.

Meanwhile, other changes happening hospital-wide also helped to ease some of the ER congestion. Physicians and nurses started to emphasize discharge planning almost as soon as patients were admitted. In the past, discharge planning only took place toward the end of a patient’s stay, which often led to extra days spent unnecessarily in the hospital. The resulting bed shortages triggered a backlog of patients waiting in the ER to be admitted.

Another change involved introducing a system of early-warning signs that flagged hospital staff about imminent overcrowding, giving them more lead time to plan for a higher number of patients.

By 2010, two years after Montfort introduced lean, its ER was among three that were recognized as the most improved in the province. That year, the department was awarded a $200,000 bonus under Pay for Results. By then, the ER had left its cramped and aging space for a brand new facility that was double its previous size, part of the hospital’s $300-million expansion of its premises on Montreal Road.

The new space allowed for even more ER efficiencies to be introduced.

These days, when patients walk into the Montfort’s ER, one of the first things they see are signs telling them what the estimated waiting time is. Based on how serious their illnesses or injuries are, they are directed to different waiting areas and treatment zones. They take a number to wait so they know how many patients are ahead of them.

Instead of having nurses or porters accompany the walking wounded to get their diagnostic scans, there are colour-coded lines on the floor that guide patients to where they need to go. In the past, patient care suffered in part because staff spent so much time shuttling patients back and forth.

Hospital officials say patients, especially those with minor complaints, are now so savvy that they’ll call ahead to check Montfort’s wait times against those of The Ottawa Hospital or Queensway Carleton. “Now, people are shopping around,” says Lemaire, the ER director. “This is our reality.”

Excerpt from the Ottawa Citizen
To Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/health/Toyota+style+management+helps+Montfort+wait+times/7427615/story.html

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.