Lean Thinking
Rotorua District Council is developing a model of excellence in Lean Government by implementing Lean Thinking waste-free principles. RDC began the transformation in 2011 by adopting Kaizen methodologies. These have enabled teams and individuals across the organisation to develop new skills, new behaviours and new ways of working aimed at improving performance across the organisation.
We support and encourage staff to be flexible, innovative and positive, to meet the expectations of our customers.
The core objective is to maximise customer value while minimising waste. Simply put, Lean Thinking means creating more value for customers with fewer resources. Our Lean Thinking organisation understands customer value and focuses on key processes that will continuously increase value for those customers. The ultimate goal is to provide perfect value to the customer through a perfect value creation process with zero waste.
Our Lean Thinking programme uses the following methods:
Value Stream Mapping (VSM)
Value stream mapping refers to the activity of developing a high level visual representation of a process flow involved in delivering a product or service (ie a ‘value stream’) to customers. Typically taking 3 to 4 days, VSM focuses on identifying sources of non value-added activity and prioritising future improvement activities.
Kaizen
Kaizen means ‘to change for the good of all’. Kaizen activity is often focused on rapid process improvement events (ie kaizen events) that bring together a cross-functional team for 3 to 5 days to examine a specific process and immediately implement process changes.
5S
5S is the name of a workplace organisation method that uses a list of five Japanese words which when translated into English all start with the letter ‘S’ - ie Sort, Set-in-order, Shine, Standardise, and Sustain.
You will see the following characteristics in our Lean Thinking approach:
- We take a customer service perspective by seeking to optimise value delivered to the general public, the regulated community, and other stakeholders;
- We involve employees and external stakeholders in continual improvement and problem-solving activities;
- We deploy a rapid continuous improvement framework that emphasises implementation rather than prolonged planning;
- We aim to reduce the complexity of processes and variation in process outputs;
- We use performance metrics and visual controls to provide rapid communication and feedback to improve real-time decision-making and problem-solving.
If you are interested to learn more about Lean Thinking at Rotorua District Council, please contact Mijo Katavic extn 8319 or email mijo.katavic@rdc.govt.nz