Chris Collins Leads Lean Six Sigma in Erie County GovernmentBy Jon Miller |Comments: 2
He has an impressive list of accomplishments already, including working for $1 and donating his salary to The Brighter Future Fund, driving his own car to work, and cutting wasted expenditures such as cell phones across the county government. Of particular interest is Chris Collins' pioneering use of lean six sigma methodology at the count level to improve quality, service and reduce cost: Lean Six Sigma is a proven business methodology to increase efficiency and eliminate waste. Chris Collins is the first County Executive in the nation to implement Lean Six Sigma in a large government setting. It's already exceeding expectations and has saved taxpayers millions of dollars. There are 18 completed lean six sigma project reports in PDF form on the Erie County website. I highly recommend reviewing these for both form and content. One of my favorites is "High Speed Copier Printer Optimization". The copy room and the waste surrounding printing of paper in organizations large and small is so often overlooked. The 40-page presentation follows the DMAIC approach, makes great use of Pareto charts, and delivers savings of over $200,000. This may be one document worth printing out and distributing. The Reform Government effort led by Erie County Executive Chris Collins is also notable for its Culture Change Program. High performing organizations have strong cultures, and Erie County should be no different. Culture is the shared set of beliefs, attitudes and values that influence how people in an organization behave. This program is rooted in the vision to make Erie County a world class community, and that the county government takes a leading role in developing this vision. It is great to see the lean six sigma methodology being put to use with a focus on leadership in community development. Interview with Chris Collins On Saturday February 5th, 2010 Chris Collins will be the guest on Paul Aker's radio talk show The American Innovator. In western Washington State you can dial in on radio station AM790 from 8AM to 9AM Pacific Standard Time, you can listen live online, or catch the show later in the archives. The history of local government officials doing this sort of thing goes back a long, long time. As is fairly well-known in older Deming circles, after Joseph Sensenbrenner was elected Mayor of Madison, Wisconsin, he attended a 1983 Deming seminar which made him a convert and eventually resulted in his "implementing" a city-wide application of Deming's philosophy. Curious Cat had an article mentioning this. If you go to http://www.allbusiness.com/management/benchmarking-quality-improvement/337928-1.html you can find a 1992 article addressing several such efforts (including Madison's). Although quite a few have taken continuous improvement as an elective course, we are a long way off from it ever becoming official policy. I'll probably be institutionalized before it is.
Poster: Simon Ellberger | Post Date: February 5, 2010 4:28 PM |
This is much more common in non-elected positions in government because elected officials are notoriously short-sighted, focused on the next election. But we are seeing a trend. I met with the mayor of Appleton, Wisconsin who is trying to drive lean. The County of Ventura in Cali is also leading lean from the top. More and more are seeing it as a way to DELIVER on campaign promises. I hope these few seeds can turn into a trend.