Posts under the ‘Success Stories’ category

Lean in Higher Education is about the University delivering expected value through their processes and services, using University resources more effectively, and providing employees of the University with more meaningful work.

The department of Geological and Mining Engineering and Sciences, recently learned how successful their spring 2012 kaizen event on their graduate application review process was.  The “current state” prior to any improvements was that the length of time it took to respond to graduate students was causing a loss of students (to other schools who respond faster), re-work, and over-processing of application material.  The length of time to respond was approximately 50 days!

A cross-functional kaizen team was brought together one year ago to focus on this problem.  The team consisted of members of the graduate student selection committee, a staff member from the Michigan Tech Graduate School, a graduate student providing the perspective of a customer, and a Lean facilitator. A process map was created indicating that there were 33 steps to complete a review and respond to students.  The team identified problems within the many steps and brainstormed ideas to eliminate the problems/waste.

As a result the process was reduced from 33 steps to 24 steps, a 27% improvement.  After a year of collecting post-kaizen metrics the team has recently learned that their improvements have reduced the time to respond to students from 50 to 15 days – an impressive 70% improvement!  Congratulations to the kaizen team!!

The process map for the graduate application review process.

You might recall a post from almost one year ago when I introduced the concept of personal kanban boards.  I began using this tool that week and I have not gone a day without using my board since!  I find this tool to be very effective for my work (projects, correspondence, coordination of activities, etc.).

If you compare the below picture to the graphic in the 2012 blog post you will see that my personal kanban has evolved quite a bit – a little bit of check and adjust.  I have made many changes over this past year to adapt the board to fit my needs, I think this is a very important step in making your kanban board work for you.

Here is a bit about some of the changes I made to my board:

• I color coded my work (stickies) by month – giving each month a color allows me to see items that are falling behind.  A month works great for the type of work I do.
• I changed my headings – the original PDCA heading was more confusing than helpful (personal opinion, I know others who find these headings to work well).   I came up with three headings: my “hopper” are items I will work on at some point, “today” is work items for the day, and my “waiting” column allows me to keep track of items that I sent off but will be waiting for a response on.
• I also strategically limited my column sizes.  For instance, my “today” column cannot fit more than five stickies.  I would despise working a day with more than five stickies – so this board constraint holds me to that.  Limiting your work in process (WIP) is one rule for personal kanban.  The other rule is to visualize your work.

In the past year, I also found a great website that helped me better understand this concept:  http://www.personalkanban.com/pk/.

If you are interested in starting a personal kanban board for yourself or your work group, please contact me.  We have many examples across campus to give you some ideas.

Wendy's Personal Kanban March 2013

Brittany Wood, Market Research Analyst Intern and I began working on an article that was to discuss the Lean “journey” Michigan Tech’s Dining Services has experienced over the past four years. After lots of research, interviews, and multiple drafts the article was completed in October.

The Business Officers magazine has published the article in their February edition! The article is the feature piece in the Business Intel section of the magazine.

Special thanks to Kathy Wardynski, Ellen Horsch, and Bob Hiltunen for letting us interview them on multiple occasions, and to Ann Kitalong-Will, Wendy Davis, Megan Johnson, Ellen Horsch, and Gina Sayen for reviewing and editing the many drafts of the article.

You can read the article online, or contact Wendy Davis to borrow a copy of the magazine out of the Lean Library.

By Megan Johnson, Student Process Improvement Coordinator

Data collection is an important element when making improvements because without it there is lack of “evidence” that a problem exists. Why are you improving? Is it really a problem?  Many times “problems” are exaggerated by feelings and frustration.  Often times the frustration is related to symptoms of what the root problem is.

If there is a concern about a process, data-collection can be used to paint a picture of the “current state” and provide insight into current issues and hone in on where improvements should focus.  A recent kaizen event for navigating the Memorial Union Building (MUB) is a good example of the importance of having that baseline data.  It seemed that a lot of guests in the building would stop in various offices to ask for directions to different meeting rooms.  Interruptions can be frustrating for employees, but was navigating the MUB a problem for guests?

Data collection began to identify the frequency a guest would stop and ask a MUB staff member for directions to their meeting room. Also, where did the guest enter the building and what room were they looking for?  After the data confirmed that there was an issue, a kaizen event took place on November 28 to analyze the data to identify improvements.  A team identified countermeasures to reduce/eliminate the navigation problem and is currently implementing them.  They will continue to collect data to gauge the success of the changes.

Click here to learn more about Metrics and Data Collection.

Navigating the MUB Kaizen Event Team at Work

General Manager, Scott Raffaelli showcasing their "shopping cart"

I had the opportunity to take a tour of Pettibone in Baraga, MI earlier this week.  Pettibone is currently working on incorporating Lean practices into its operations, and they are one of  12 local business in Houghton County that make up a group that we have coined the “Local Lean Group.”  We have been meeting every few months to learn from each other.  In the picture above, Scott is showing a cart that you or I could walk into the plant and complete without flaw.   They have highly visible, standardized operations and practices (which result in fewer mistakes and serve as a platform form even more improvement).  If you are interested to learn more about our group, give me a call or send me an email

By Kaylee Betzinger, Student Process Improvement Coordinator

Lean Training funded by a grant from the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS) has been going on for the past several months. November 5^th and 6^th marked the last FMCS Lean Training sessions here on campus with our consultants, Mike Taubitz and Larry Osentoski.  Two cohorts of employees completed Lean training:

• Lean Facilitators – trained to facilitate Kaizen Events for any campus department or area interested in making improvements.
• Lean Implementation Leaders – trained in Lean concepts aimed at building a Lean practice into the day-to-day work for an area or department.

Lean Training Group Picture with Consultants

During the last training sessions each trainee participated in a Kaizen Event. The Lean Implementation Leaders chose a problem within their department for teams to work through and the Lean Facilitator teamed up to practice their Kaizen Event facilitation skills.

Team creating a Process Map during Kaizen Event

Team Reporting on the Changes Made

Each trainee had their own personal experience with the training. There were many laughs among the group and a lot of great memories. Some of the trainees share some of their experiences:

• Rachel Wussow: “When learning Lean tools and thinking Lean, I am challenging and improving myself as a professional. My customer is an 18 year old college student. So, I have to teach the Lean lessons to a different generation of thinkers. Lean is more than improvement it is sustaining and acting. The world is full of change and Lean is a tool of adjustment.”
• Cat Burns: “My first experience was very positive. I enjoyed working with people that I may not normally interact with. It felt great to officially start my involvement with Michigan Tech’s Lean Journey. I was lucky to have two great (and original) Facilitators work with me on my first Kaizen.”

Thank you to all our trainees, our consultants, and Manager of Process Improvement, Wendy Davis for making these training sessions so enjoyable and valuable!

By: Puneet Kumar Vasudev

Continuous improvement is an ongoing effort to improve products, services, or processes. These efforts can seek “incremental” improvement over time or “breakthrough” improvement all at once. Delivery (customer valued) processes are constantly evaluated and improved in the light of their efficiency, effectiveness and flexibility. I work as a student process improvement coordinator at Auxiliary Services.  I have been working on an improvement project with Kathy Wardynski, Manager or Purchasing and Process Improvement, looking at fryer oil consumption. Wadsworth Hall was consuming more than twice the amount of oil as compared to the oil consumption of any of the residential halls when the figures of oil consumption per number of students catered was compared.

According to the work instruction at each work station in Wadsworth Hall, fryer oil is cleaned daily during the last shift and the oil is changed on every Saturday, if needed. The oil change instructions require a dip test with a tester in which a paper strip is dipped in oil and the color on the strip left by the oil is compared with the chart to indicate whether it is fit for use or not. This practice was not being followed effectively.  This led to two different situations, either the oil was being changed even if it would have been good for 3-4 more days or oil change was delayed leading to bad food quality.

Since oil quality measurement was a concern, it was decided to remove the ambiguity related to existing oil testing method, with a new digital oil tester. In addition to the new tester, a data capture sheet was drafted to monitor the deterioration in oil condition and oil changes of different work stations.  Oil is now changed as needed, at any given day of the week.  Through the data collection at Wadsworth Hall we hope to come out with new data and figures to implement more improvements with fryer oil consumption.   

It is estimated that the small changes made will save $5,000 per year in fryer oil consumption at Wadsworth Hall.

Fryer Oil in Use

Digital Fryer Oil Tester

Recently, Assistant Vice President for Administration, Theresa Coleman-Kaiser was interviewed for a Radio show on Michigan Business Network’s website .   Theresa spoke about our Lean Journey and how Lean principles are becoming more widly practiced here at the University.   

Click HERE to listen to her interview.

Blog post written by: Kaylee Betzinger, Student Process Improvement Coordinator

Metrics boards are used to showcase an area’s leading performance indicators and valued or strategic goals.  Over the past few weeks, staff in each residence hall kitchen have been working together to standardize metric board layout and eliminate the “waste” associated with the current state of their boards (or lack of boards). 

The 5S methodology was utilized to see this project out.  Sorting through the metrics that were currently being displayed, creating an order, shining (purchasing new boards where needed), and a weekly rotation schedule to insure all the metrics get updated each week (sustain).  

There are now metrics boards, as well as safety boards, in each of the halls.  Metric boards track food waste in dollars and pounds, inventory on hand, and other key performance indicators.  The safety boards track days without incident and display lockdown and evacuation procedures, weekly operating reports, and monthly kitchen safety inspection sheets. With the new metrics boards in place, there is less confusion amongst staff and key performance indicators are reinforced.  It is also recommended that Daily Team Meetings take place at the metrics board.  

Take a look at some of the before and after pictures from this project:   

Before – General Information Board

Before - Misc. information everywhere!

After - Safety Board