Lean Process Improvement Initiative

About the Program

Category: County Administration and Management (Best in Category)

Year: 2014

The Lean Process Improvement Initiative is a set of concepts, principles, and tools to deliver the most value from the customer’s perspective while consuming the fewest resources. Lean frees up staff time for value-added work by removing waste from the processes around us. The Clackamas County Health, Housing and Human Services Department (H3S) launched the Lean Process Improvement Initiative in August 2009 as part of a process improvement effort. The effort puts the client’s needs first by ultimately delivering higher quality services, by keeping wait times to a minimum, and by reducing the redundancy of needed paperwork and information generally gathered from the client. From a county’s perspective, it allows employees to reduce the time spent doing tasks and paperwork that is redundant and that may have no added value to the process. Since its implementation, Lean has saved Clackamas County 10,129 staff hours, which equals five (5) full-time employees. Lean has also reduced the number of total wait days for clients by 805 days.