Quick Glance Case Study: Work Flow Tracking

“Using Kanban principles has enabled complete control and visibility over the entire workflow, allowing us to deliver improved performance and greater accountability”

After completing a ChangeWise Lean Practitioner training course, one candidate submitted the following work-place project to gain their qualification to LCS Level 1c.

The Business Challenge

Multiple, complicated processes were in place to manage the workstreams for our Field Operatives. These systems proved extremely time consuming, inefficient and were not user friendly.

In order to manage these multiple work-streams, a number of labour-intensive reports were prepared manually and emailed to relevant stakeholders. In addition, to support stakeholders who did not have access to the full suite of systems, large amounts of data was compiled and emailed separately. However, due to the nature of the data, once the reports were created, they were almost immediately out of date.

An end-to-end Lean review was completed to address the issues.

Photo by Wesley Tingey on Unsplash

Key people involved from client site

Representatives from the Field Operations Team, members of the SLT receiving the data and the project team responsible for creating and sending reports.

Lean Methodology Employed

DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analise, Improve, Control)

The candidate completed a full Lean review of the end-to-end current state process.

Various Lean methodologies were employed, specifically Voice of Customer Data, SIPOC, Value Stream Mapping, Value and Non-Value Add Analysis and KANBAN principles.

Photo by Campaign Creators on Unsplash

Key Current State Findings

Using the Current State Process Mapping and Lean Value Analysis techniques, various wastes were identified:

• Multiple data sources and work-streams across different platforms made tracking and prioritisation/ownership difficult.
• Whilst there were clear processes for the ‘do work’ aspects, there was no defined or consistent process to manage the workflow – this resulted in lack of ownership and hand offs.
• Due to the different data sources and platforms, unnecessary emails were sent that served no business value.
• Important aspects of each stage were not visible to the support managers and analysts, this resulted in retrospective performance reviews rather than proactive performance management.

Benefits and Outcomes

Lean techniques were applied, enabling the team to achieve some significant process and cost improvements:

• Current state process mapping identified the key data and matched it to the key/correct stakeholders
• Using KANBAN principles, a new workflow system was chosen as the delivery platform. A working group was set-up to test the process flow.
• Once a template had been established, additional workflow management tools were utilised in respect to notifications, labels, owners and reminder due dates.
• All feedback was gathered from the pilot groups and improvements applied:
  • Standardisation applied for naming conventions, labels, prioritisation and notifications.
  • 5 Step stage gate process established.
  • Reduced hand-off’s / missed opportunities
  • Improved ownership and accountability
  • Reduced requirement for reporting (spreadsheets for applicable processes is now zero)
  • Workflow is 100% value adding
  • Project has been scaled up to include entire stage gate process
  • Improved morale and collaborations
  • Multi-stakeholder engagement
  • Device agnostic solution fostering flexibility and cross team working

In Summary

This new workflow management system is now fully embedded, allowing significant time, cost and quality improvements. Using Kanban principles has enabled complete control and visibility over the entire workflow, which is delivering improved performance and greater accountability.

Interested in looking at how Lean can help with your workflow and tracking needs? Contact us at info@changewise.co.uk and let’s talk about how we can help.

ChangeWise believes employee engagement is the foundation for successful Change. Training and coaching your people to use simple continuous improvement techniques will enable your organisation to continuously adapt and stay ahead in a constantly changing and challenging environment.

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Find out more about our Training Courses at www.changewise.co.uk