Lean Thinking
Leaders today in a wide range of industries, nonprofit organizations, government agencies, healthcare, and other areas are finding ways to apply the principles of lean as a means of producing goods and delivering services that creates value for the customer with the minimum amount of waste and the maximum degree of quality.
Improving the performance of office processes and service delivery is a critical key to how the City of Southlake keeps the focus on spending tax payer's money efficiently as well as keeping service delivery on focus with our customers needs. The most successful approach to the industrialization of office and service processes is Lean Thinking. The City of Southlake organization is undertaking a lean makeover by looking for new opportunities to create value for customers by removing waste from every process.
Where did Lean Thinking come from?
A lot of the main concepts were initially used by Henry Ford, who was the first person to integrate a complete assembly system, under what he called "flow production." After World War II, the Toyota Motor Company modified Ford's concepts and implemented them in their organization as a way to overcome its limited human, financial, and material resources. The Toyota Production System (or TPS), became one of the first management systems using lean principles to produce a wide variety of products with some of the fewest defects.
How does it work?
Utilizing Lean Thinking allows an organization to eliminate waste and dramatically improve process cycle time. Mapping out processes and determining the value stream helps us define the source of delays and holdups in order to reduce non-value added steps.
How has Southlake used Lean?
Southlake has used Lean Thinking in evaluating the following processes:
- Development review process
- Permitting process
- Annual budget process
It is our goal to evaluate at least one process using lean principles each year.