Lean programme (FOI)

​​Request

A

Which Departments are, or have been, undertaking a Lean programme?

B

What has been the cost to date of the Lean contract for each department?

C

What is the estimated final cost per Department for the Lean contact?

D

What are the savings obtained per department?

E

What are the savings, percentage and amount, per operational unit in each department, listing the name of each operational unit?

F

What is the percentage improvement in throughput in each operational unit?

G

What is the percentage improvement in outcomes in each operational unit?  

Response 

A

The Lean Programme is a States of Jersey programme to improve efficiency as part of the Public Sector Reform Programme (PSR) and includes all departments within the States of Jersey. 

Lean is a methodology which gives the tools to drive change and puts the customer at the heart of service design. It creates a culture of continuous improvement, enabling employees to drive change from the bottom up. 

Approximately 700 employees have been trained as Lean practitioners. Following the training, departments are at different stages of adoption of the Lean principles. 

B

The total investment delivered centrally through the PSR programme until December 2015 was £664,000. This figure includes all expenses incurred, including a central resource for the administration of the programme and the cost of using external providers for the training.  

C

The intention of the Lean Programme was to equip staff with the relevant skills in order to drive change and modernise the public service whilst improving our service to the customer. 

The States of Jersey no longer has an ongoing contract in place to provide training as the majority can now be provided in-house by qualified existing employees. 

D

Lean does not focus on cost savings as the ultimate goal. 

Lean is a methodology which gives the tools to drive change and puts the customer at the heart of service design. 

It creates a culture of continuous improvement, enabling employees to drive change from the bottom up. 

When processes are streamlined, the time savings create capacity for employees to focus on core tasks which are most valued by the customer or spend time on further improving services.

Project benefits are recorded by each department, however many benefits are difficult to track in financial terms, such as customer satisfaction, goodwill and employee morale.

The benefits in the table below are for projects completed as at 30 June 2016: ​​

These benefits have been recorded through specific Lean activity. However, the ethos of Lean was to embed continual improvement and many changes are taking place in teams across departments which will not be recorded centrally. 

Page 79 of the Draft Medium Term Financial Plan (MTFP) Addition for 2017 to 2019 identifies £77 million of savings over the period 2016 to 2019 and Lean has been a contributory factor in enabling departments to meet their targets, and will remain so in the ongoing period.

Draft Medium Term Fin​ancial Plan Addition for 2017 ​to 2019 on States Assembly website

E

The benefits by operational unit is not held for Lean projects as many have crossed different teams making it difficult to specifically allocate benefits to one particular unit. 

F and G.

This information is not held by departments.

Information not held

The specific information requested for questions E, F, and G about Lean projects is not held as part of the recording of the outcomes of those projects.  

Internal Review Request

The answer states that it is not possible to answer questions 5,6,7 (E, F, G). Please could I have an explanation as to how the departments know whether the Lean program has been worthwhile if they do not know these answers?

I would like an internal review – not because I think that the information is being wilfully withheld but because I think that any lean analysis should be three dimensional. The analysis should look at length of time for a procedure or process, the improvement in the outcome for the customer and, as a by-product, the savings in costs. The only item quoted has been the reduction in cost.

Internal Review Response

The original response stated that the information requested (in parts 5, 6 and 7) was not held. It is confirmed this is the case.

The Jersey Lean System follows the 3D principles of: Discover, Design and Deliver. Lean is a methodology that gives employees at ground level the skills and confidence to enable them to lead changes that affect their area of work.

As the knowledge of Lean principles has expanded throughout States departments, some staff have received additional specialist training and had taken up full-time positions as Lean practitioners. However a large number of Lean projects are also initiated by front line staff within individual teams.

Lean is a way of thinking and teaches staff to focus on looking into the processes behind how work is carried out to identify what areas are valued by the customer and then identify any waste in those processes in order to make services more efficient and better for the customer.

The savings that have been recorded for each project are the total realised benefits. In most cases, the largest realised benefit relates to the value of hours saved for staff by the improvement of services, which in turn creates capacity for staff to concentrate more time on tasks that are valued by the customer and further improvement projects.

At this relatively early stage of operational maturity, it has not been cost-effective to collate detailed statistics in respect of the impact of the process improvement as a percentage of the overall activity within a specific departmental area. However, it can be confirmed that the analysis in respect of each individual project that is undertaken does indeed:

• consider the time taken to complete a process and at the value and waste contained within the original process

• consider how the outcome for the customer can be improved

• consider the overall cost of the process

Overall, there are already many tangible and intangible benefits flowing from the Lean programme. As the use and understanding of Lean matures across departments, we will ensure that the quantitative and qualitative recording of the success of improvements is provided in a common format that will help us shape further initiatives.

So far, in total, 102 projects have been completed with realised benefits of £1,275,908.