It’s Lean, Jim, but not as we know it. Presentation on 2nd International Lean Six Sigma Conference for Higher Education in Arnhem, The Netherlands, organized by HAN University of Applied Sciences

1. It’s Lean, Jim,
but not as we know it.
Professor Zoe J Radnor
Professor of Service Operations
Management
Loughborough University
School of Business and Economic

2. Main Findings: Lean in Higher Education
(Radnor and Bucci, 2011)
• It is early days for Lean development and implementation in Higher
Education.
• There is still a lot of opportunity for improvement and a lot to be learnt
from the experience of other public service organisations.
• There is fragmented uptake of Lean making it difficult to identify some
‘outstanding’ examples of Lean implementation.
• Some of the early adopters are showing real signs of engagement and
embedment.
• There was limited understanding of the key principles of Lean and how
they should be driving the improvements.
• Lean appears to be driven by mainly administrative and support staff,
who can see the benefits.
• There is a focus on project based activities around one or two
processes.
Radnor and Bucci (2011), Analysis of Lean Implementation in UK
Business Schools and Universities, Association of Business School,
London

3. 99%
in 2 hours
93%
same day
(electronic)
6%
same day
2%
same day
(post)
From submission to
creation of student
record
From SITS
to form sent
to
department
Department
decision
20 days
mean
25 days
mean
Quality
assurance,
transmission of
decision
9 days
mean
11 days
mean
Emails
at peak
7000 emails
10 weeks+
200 emails
3 weeks+
PG Admissions
Process Review
• Volume increasing but fixed resource (67%
increase in applications since 2005)
• Pressure from stakeholders to increase
pace of decision-making
Why?
Before After
How?
• CTS Tree
• SIPOC
• Opportunity Statement
• Map process (3 walls of post-it notes
and brown paper!)
• Analysis variation
• 5 whys
• 7 wastes
• Improve flow
• Run charts /
histograms
Additional benefits?
0%
2%
4%
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100110120130140150160170180190200210220230240
2008 cycle - as % of total 2009 cycle - as % of totalTarget = 20 days
• ownership
• team building
• continuous
improvement
• challenging what we do
• control
• greater understanding from a
wider perspective
• reduced paper
• scope now extended
• better awareness and use of
data
To communicate all initial decisions on postgraduate applications within 4 weeks of receipt.

4. Measure Old process New process
Touch points between University staff 33 10
Touch points between University and BiT 9 (+ variable failure
demand)
4
Time to get everything required to
become a BiT (contract, IT access etc….)
12-47 days 2 days
Time to get paid 5-12 days (+payroll) 1 day (+payroll)
Change Projects Portfolio Version 1: Mar 2014
Process review for bought-in-teachers (BiTs)
Project leaders: Sam Marshall and Meg Stafford
Future state
Issue definition
The process by which the University employs and pays bought-in teachers (BiTs) is,
complex and confusing for staff and BiTs alike. There are lengthy delays in providing BiTs
with contracts, IT access and appropriate teaching quality assessments. It is difficult to
collate the data required for the University’s HESA return and there is a risk of non-
compliance with regard to establishing our BITs’ right to work in the UK.
Current status
Short term actions
Action Who? When?
Complete experiment with new flow SM/MS Feb 2014
Gap analysis for system requirements SM/MS Feb 2014
Complete IT system development ITS with SM/MS
Cost and savings
• Significant staff time savings across Schools, HR and Payroll
• Cost of IT development work
Measures
Issues
• Long delays in production of contracts, caused by batching and backlogs
• Long delays in gaining necessary IT access, parking etc.
• Delays lead to a large volume of emails and phone calls from BiTs
• Copying and pasting of information increases risk of error
• Risk of non-compliance with regard to HR issues
• Adding BiTs to claims payroll automatically blocks required IT access
• Teaching quality data is often incomplete and not shared with the right staff
• HESA data is often incomplete, leading to problems with our funding returns
• Historic forms are still being completed, that no longer serve any purpose
Follow up
• University wide roll-out to be in place prior to start of 2014/15
• Monitor new flow in 2014/15 and collect feedback
Define Check Follow Categorise Map Analyse Design Experiment Scale-up

5. Challenges of Lean in Public Services
1. A focus and over reliance on lean workshops
2. A tool based approach to lean implementation
3. Impact of public sector culture and structures
4. Lack of focus on the customer (service user) and
understanding of service process
• Lean has to date simply been a catalyst to address
the prior poor design of the public service.
• Will it become just a recipe for creating efficient but
permanently failing PSOs?
Radnor, Z.J and Osborne, S.P. (2013),’Is Lean a failed theory for Public Service?’, Public
Management Review

6. Improvement
Opportunity
TimeAwareness, education,
organization structure
created to support lean
RIEs Vs. Full Implementation
Greater, sustained
results achieved
Improvement levelled off and
eventually stopped due to lack
of realizing “true” lean
opportunity
CULTURE CHANGE
Short term
gains made
Lost and repeated results
due to no sustainability
Kaizen Blitz
Rapid Improvement Events
Source: Chris Craycraft, Whirlpool

7. Our Lean Tools Guarantee Success!
Just Buy These Tools!
Real Results In Just Six Weeks!Instant Lean Or Your Money Back!
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…but really, we all
know it takes more
than tools to make real
change happen!

8. Public Service Context and Structures
• Lean within public services to date has been
defective due to a lack of understanding of the
principles and assumptions of lean and, the
context which it is being implemented.
• Public services need to embrace a (public)
service dominant logic
• Service dominant logic argues placing the user at
the heart of the service
• Service Blueprinting is a service design
methodology which engages with users and
considers the ‘touchpoints’ between service user
and provider

9. Service Management
• Much of the public management literature built on
product and manufacturing logic.
• The majority of ‘public goods’ are in fact not ‘public
products’ but rather ‘public services’.
• Need to draw from service management logic to
‘unpack’, understand, manage and operationalise
public services.
• Move from a public sector to public service ethos
• Public services need to embrace a (public) service
dominant logic
• Service dominant logic argues placing the user at
the heart of the service
Osborne, S., Z. J. Radnor and G. Nasi (2013). "A new theory for public service management?
Towards a service-dominant approach." American Review of Public Administration

10. Services Dominant Logic
Three core characteristics of services which differentiate them
from manufacturing goods :
1. Whilst a product is invariably concrete a service is intangible
• Services can not be stored.
2. There is a different production logic for manufactured products
and for services.
• For manufacturing production and consumption occur separately.
With services production and consumption occur simultaneously.
3. The role of the end-user is qualitatively different for
manufactured products and services
• In manufacturing they are ‘simply’ purchasers and consumers. For
services, the user is also a co-producer of the service.
Osborne, S., Z. J. Radnor and G. Nasi (2013). "A new theory for public service management?
Towards a service-dominant approach." American Review of Public Administration

11. A Public Services-Dominant Theory
of Lean
Lean is delivering efficiency but need to embed it
within a service model to delivery effectiveness
1. Internal efficiency is important but has be focused on
adding value to end users not just for efficiency sake!
2. Internal quality equals external quality so get the reform
agenda right first time!
3. Get end users involved in the lean reform agenda and
public service delivery.
4. Lean needs to be part of a reform strategy based on
service management not as a series of technical exercises.
5. Professionals need to share knowledge and co-produce
with the end users.
Radnor, Z.J and Osborne, S.P. (2013),’Is Lean a failed theory for Public Service?’, Public
Management Review

12. Service Blueprinting
• Service design is an approach where the end-users are
the main focus and their experience is viewed holistically
rather than concentrating on the individual processes
which support service delivery.
• The concept of a service blueprint was presented by
Shostack in an article in Harvard Business Review in
1982.
• Service blueprinting is a graphical representation of the
service process: A Service Blueprint
• It consists of identifying processes, fail points and wait
points.
• It can be a tool to operationalize lean by allowing
understanding of the ‘touchpoints’ so points of
production/consumption to allow improvements and
innovations in the service design.

13. Service Blueprint
• The complete service process needs to include all the steps that the
user encounters as part of the service delivery process. These
‘touchpoints’ are plotted in a sequential order from left to right at the top
of the blueprint.
• The blueprint is divided into two zones: frontstage and backstage,
separated by the line of visibility. Everything that appears above the line
of visibility is what the user is exposed to and comes in direct contact
with.
• Key touchpoints, each stage of the process is analysed in depth
providing details for frontstage and backstage operations. These include
target and actual timing for each stage.
• Points are identified where users may perceive failure in the service
delivery process as well as areas of excessive wait (AEW).
• The fail points and AEW should be prioritised to focus improvement.

14. Example: University of Derby
• Over 10 months the student experience of the enrolment process was
reviewed at the University of Derby.
• Enrolment was defined as the point at which an individual's status
changes from an applicant to a student, it was considered to be
significant point for which a review of service design and student
relationship management.
• The aim of the project as outlined in the documentation was to:
– Use service improvement strategies (service design) to map the
student lifecycle from pre-entry to readiness for learning and
teaching and scrutinise these with stakeholders.
– Develop a blueprint of the enrolment process from the student's
point of view considering main stages of the process, timing,
participants, tangible and intangible aspects of student's
experience. This analysis would form the basis of the service
improvement plan.

15. Enrolment Service Design project stages

17. Discussion
• For Derby University considering the student enrolment process
Service Blueprinting as a technique has proved a powerful tool in
engaging not only staff but management and students.
• It allowed the complexity of the system to be presented in a
diagrammatic form, highlighting and identifying fail and wait points to
provide a very powerful approach to focusing effort on enhancements
where the biggest impact will be made to the felt student experience.
• “fundamental change…. in rather than assuming that what we knew,
or thought we knew, would be best for the students, we have actively
sought their input as end-user designers and co-producers of their
own student experience” (University of Derby, 2012).
• Subsequent evaluation of the impact of the redesigned enrolment
system at the UoD found its performance to be improved across a
number of dimensions – from an academic, administrative and student
experience point of view.
• Service Blueprinting used in a set of workshops at Edinburgh
University to review student enrolment. Highlighted areas of mis-
understanding between the Schools and Register.

18. Lean in Public Services (including
Universities!)
Need to consider Lean not as a quick fix but as a implementation
philosophy.
“A series of RIEs does not Lean make!”
There is a need to develop a mindset within the organisation of process
and customer view
“Public Service not Public Sector ethos”
Move thinking from task/ policy to value/ process.
Use approaches such as service blueprinting to understand touchpoints
Need to develop an awareness of variation, demand and capacity
relationships.
“See the variable as the work not the demand/ customer”
Create and focus on improving stable processes
Standardise the process not the outputs and outcomes
Need to ensure that there is strong and committed leadership and
there is a link to strategy.
Not just about cost cutting and efficiency