Using LeanLean to improve customer service

at the University of St Andrews

Lean at the University of St Andrews an introductory guide

The benefits of Lean

Why Lean at St Andrews?

The five principles of Lean

The eight wastes

How can I implement Lean in my area?

Knowing what your customer wants

Measuring and data-gathering

Using charts to interpret information

Mapping the customer journey

Using 5S to organise your workplace

Using visual management tools

What next? Keeping Lean going

How do I make Lean work for me?

Ensuring great customer service

Where can I get more support?

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The benefits of Lean

Why go Lean?

Lean thinking began with the Toyota Production System which transformed car manufacturing

in post-war Japan, but is now being used by companies and organisations around the world,

in the public and private sectors, to improve:

Customer service Quality and efficiency Staff morale Internal communication and cooperation

Lean is simple to implement and results are easily sustained.

The principles are common-sense and can be adapted to give benefits in a range of

business and service environments. For example, in recent years both Tesco and the NHS

have successfully used Lean to improve the quality of their service. The benefits they have

seen include:

Reduced waiting times Lower costs Improved customer experience

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Why Lean at St Andrews?

People have got all sorts of questions about Lean:

– Why here, why now?

– Isn’t “Lean” more appropriate to manufacturing and heavy industry?

– Is this just the latest management fad?

The fact is, Lean has proven its worth in streamlining processes and improving

Efficiency within office administration. Many UK universities are now implementing

large-scale change programmes aimed at reviewing their administrative services and

developing a culture of continuous improvement.

High quality administrative support is vital for the smooth running of every area of the

University of St Andrews. As in many organisations, administrative functions in St Andrews

have grown organically, which can lead to some services suffering because of a lack of

coordination and clarity of purpose.

We have a lot of skilled and motivated people who want to provide great service.

Now it’s important to ensure that our administrative staff members are able to direct their

Time and energy in doing so, without being held back or let down by outdated,

unnecessary processes.

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The five principles of Lean

Specify Value Is our service currently providing value to the customer? One of the ways in

which we can find this out is by measuring the type and frequency of

customer demand.

For us, ‘the customer’ will almost certainly mean our students, but may also

include our colleagues in other parts of the University, parents, alumni and

external organisations.

Identify the value stream By mapping our administrative processes, step-by-step, we can see what

adds value and provides a good service to our customers, and where there is

waste.

Make the process flow We work on eliminating waste from our administrative processes, to

streamline the end-to-end journey. This makes the process ‘flow’ smoothly

and efficiently, and minimises delay.

Let the customer pull By focusing on the customer, we can understand and respond efficiently to

customer demand. We look at every transaction between the customer and

ourselves from the customer point of view.

Continual Improvement We aim for perfection by taking responsibility for reviewing and improving

our service on an ongoing basis.

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The eight wastes

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Lean begins with an awareness of waste in our administrative processes, and in considering

how we can reduce or remove it.

The eight wastes we may find are:

Transport Unnecessary movement of materials,

people, information or paper.

Inventory Excess stock: unnecessary files and

copies, and extra supplies.

Motion Unnecessary walking and searching;

things not within reach or accessible.

Waiting Idle time that causes the workflow to

stop, such as waiting for signatures,

machines, phone calls.

Over-production

Producing either too much paperwork /

information, or producing it before it is

required. This consumes resources faster

than necessary.

Over-processing

Processing things that don’t add value to

the customer, e.g. asking for student

details multiple times, excessive checking

or duplication.

Defects Work that needs to be redone due to

errors (whether human or technical) or

because incorrect or incomplete

information was provided.

Skills misuse

Not using full potential of staff; wasting

the available knowledge, experience and

ideas.

How can I implement Lean in my area?

Lean has a number of tools that can be used to help you. These tools are designed to be

quick

and simple to use, and present information in a visual way that is easy to understand.

Tools include:

Data-gathering techniques

Charts and diagrams

Value stream mapping

5S for workplace organisation

Visual management

These are just some of the tools that may help you understand demand, measure

performance

and plan for change.

The Lean project team can give you information on and examples of further tools that you may

find useful.

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Knowing what your customer wants

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Who is your customer?

Probably your customers include students. Consider also the other people (or organisations)

to whom you provide information, data, paperwork or to whom you refer students. Internally,

your customers may be academics, School secretaries, or colleagues in other administrative

departments. Externally, you may deal with parents, alumni, colleagues at other higher

education institutions, funding bodies, local businesses, etc.

Your customer = anyone, internal or external, who is affected by your

processes or services

What does your customer want?

The best way to find out is to ask them.

Arrange to visit colleagues for a chat about what they need from you. Use feedback forms (printed or electronic) to ask your customer to rate your service. Collect data on what customers are asking you when they get in touch, in their own

words.

Encourage feedback – good AND bad. A silent customer isn’t necessarily a happy customer,

and you can only fix the problems if you know what they are.

A good place to begin building a picture of your current processes and service is by

measuring and data-gathering.

Consider measuring such things as:

End-to-end time of dealing with a work unit (this may be an individual file or application,

a visitor, an invoice, or a transaction).

How long work or customers spend waiting for the next step in the process.

Volume of work dealt with, and how this varies over a year (or week/month).

Number, type and source of errors.

Frequency and type of customer demand – what are your customers asking for, do most

of them want similar things, and are they currently receiving what they want from you?

Type of communication – how many people contact you by phone? By email? By letter

or fax? In person?

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Measuring and data-gathering

Use charts to interpret information

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A chart can be an effective and precise way both to analyse your processes and to

communicate results to others.

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Phone calls Emails Letters Visitors

A run chart shows data over time,

and allows you to identify trends

and patterns.

A pareto chart is a bar chart,

ordered highest to lowest.

This gives an instant comparison

and allows you to focus on the

biggest or most time-consuming

problems.

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Mapping the customer journey

A key part of the Lean methodology is value stream mapping.

Value is anything that is worthwhile from the customer point of view.

The stream is the journey from end to end. The ideal process flows smoothly, to deliver

output to the downstream customer as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Start with where you are now. Map each step of your service journey from the customer’s

point of view.

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This will be most effective if it is done in a

group, by the people who do the work.

It’s important that EVERY step is included,

as this is a picture of how things really are

rather than how things should be.

The value stream map can be hand drawn,

or even done with Post-It notes.

Once you have a current state map of your customer journey, identify all the steps which add

value to the customer.

Everything else is either non-value adding or is waste.

Using 5S to organise your workplace

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5S is a way of eliminating waste in your immediate

office environment. It gives workers more control

over their workplace and is a great way to start an

improvement initiative.

The 5S system has five key activities:

Sort

Straighten

ShineStandardise

Sustain

1. Sort and remove unnecessary

items.

2. Straighten up your work area so

that you have easy and efficient

access to everything you need.

3. Shine means making sure

everything is clean and in good

working order.

4. Standardise by creating

guidelines for keeping the area

organised.

5. Sustain by making 5S a habit.

Using visual management tools

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Visual management makes use of charts,

diagrams, tags, colour-coding, in fact anything that

gives instant visual feedback on the current work

state.

Use visual management to communicate current

conditions to your whole team Make sure the

display is easily visible, and keep it simple.

Two visual control concepts you may come

across in Lean are:

kanban – a signal to replace stock or respond

to a customer demand.

poka-yoke – this is a way of mistake-proofing

using colour or shape, or otherwise limiting

options, to guide your customer to do things in

the correct way.

Visual management being used to track current state in Recruitment.

A primary visual display in use in the School of Modern Languages.

What next? Keeping Lean going

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Future state mapping involves redesigning your processes, removing as much waste

as possible. The ideal state is one of continuous flow, where you are responding to

customer demand or ‘pull’ at exactly the right time. In administration, this means

performing only the work that is needed at the moment, and avoiding work that is not

required by the customer (whether a student or a colleague).

This can be done by considering the end-to-end process rather than each person’s

current duties. Again, this works best if the people who do the work are involved.

Reorganising your workspace can have

immediate benefits for efficiency, by

improving communication, reducing

motion waste, and enabling ‘joined-up’

working.

Of course, when making decisions that

will change jobs and workspace, ensure

there is two-way communication at

every stage.

How do I make Lean work for me?

You can help make your Lean initiative a success by:

Making a real time commitment – the more time you can put in, the quicker

the results and greater the rewards will be.

Allocating the resources and getting everyone involved.

Being clear about what you want to achieve.

Communicating with your team, and listening to their suggestions.

If you and your colleagues are working with the Lean project team, it’s also helpful if you:

Stay flexible and stay involved.

Keep an open mind about the possibilities.

Commit to sustaining effort over time.

Implementing Lean does require an initial investment of time, energy and imagination.

Those who have made this commitment have found the results worthwhile.

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Where can I get more support?

The Lean project team is happy to help or advise on any aspect of Lean implementation,

process streamlining and customer service improvement.

Call us on extension 2786 (Ali), 2784 (Steve), 2776 (Nicki)

Or send us an email: leanfac@st-andrews.ac.uk

You can also visit our web pages:

www.st-andrews.ac.uk/lean

Photo by: Alan Richardson 15

Bibliography

James P Womack and Daniel T Jones Lean Thinking

Don Tapping and Tom Shuker Value Stream Management for the Lean Office

Michael Heppell Five Star Service, One Star Budget

Nigel May Barlow Batteries Included! Creating Legendary Customer Service

Bourton Group Lean training material 2006

For further resources on Lean and other service improvement initiatives, please

see our web page: www.st-andrews.ac.uk/lean

Created by Nicki Brain, March 2007

Photos by Steve Yorkstone (Unless otherwise credited).