Article 7. Using Lean a Powerful Decision Making and Managing Tool

The Lean set of tools provides a standardized method for solving problems in industry and government. Example; Value Stream Mapping was used by Lean Teams in Iowa in reducing document-turnaround-time. This book proposes a Government Reform Consolidation Model using Lean Value Stream Mapping as a powerful “Decision Making Tool” when comparing alternatives during government agency consolidation applications.  Also proposed are is a General Reform Model using employee Lean Teams for Right-Sizing to get the highest efficiency possible while maintaining the effectiveness of the organization. The Model also changes the current 19th century Bureaucratic organization to a 21st century Team Managed organization.  The key is to make government work (fix it) before concentrating on managing it well.

The US Army office of Business Transformation promotes the combination of Lean and Six Sigma. The concept is to use Lean to make the decisions and find the most efficient and effective solution to a system then to use Six Sigma to manage the improved processes sustaining the quality of the system.  Many of their lean studies is on weapons delivery systems from the manufacturing facilities to the battle field. 
Ref. 3.  US Army OBT Website: http://www.armyobt.army.mil/cpi-kc-tools-lss.html

Comment by the author
The US Army example is of a high level fully trained Lean Six Sigma professionals with special skills in management.  Most government Lean Six sigma consulting is done on individual projects selected by a bureaucratic agency to fix its internal processes. Lean Six Sigma is effective at what it is intended to do, but when it is narrowly used to fix and manage an existing process  its use is limited and does not help  in employee innovation or government reform.   I fully agree that this approach has been highly successful in eliminating government waste in individual systems but this approach does not address the inefficiency of the agency as a whole because it only concentrates on one system at a time.

Enterprise Lean is a universal tool for fixing All of an Agency’s systems problems including those that are known about and addressed by the US Army using Lean Six Sigma approach.

The key to success becomes the appropriate choice of those who are team members for the problem at hand.  I recommend the US Army’s approach for solving high level delivery system problems but Lean can be used for other purposes.  I advocate what is called Enterprise Lean where everyone in the organization receives training in the Lean tools.  The result is that you have an entire organization working on its systems’ problems not just a few well trained Lean Six Sigma specialists doing all the thinking.  Both approaches are valid requiring the level of expertise brought to the lean team be appropriate for obtaining the best solution matching the complexity of the system.
   
The Reform Models presented in this blog were designed to fix “government”. You cannot fix government from within a bureaucratic organization. Bureaucratic organizations do not fix themselves because the organization itself is the problem. Therefore control of a Enterprise Lean government reform project must be from outside of the bureaucracy by whoever the bureaucracy is accountable to.  This is why in my proposals I recommend an independent Reform Committee preferably located in the State Auditors Office in state government and in the GAO in the federal government.