Lean Conference: Shaping Our Organisations for the Future
North West Employers, in partnership with NWIEP and the Leadership and Transformation Gateway, held a Lean Conference - Shaping our Organisations for the Future - on 14 September 2009 at the Reebok Football Stadium, Wigan.
The purpose of the event was to answer five questions:
- What is Lean – and where has it come from?
- Is organisational culture important to the decisions I make about approach or implementation?
- Can these approaches help my organisation to meet the key challenges facing the public sector in the years ahead?
- How have other public sector organisations approached Lean implementation?
- How ready is my organisation for this approach?
The conference brought together just over 50 delegates, attracting Chief Executives, Directors, senior team members and organisational development professions.
We were privileged to be joined by:
Arthur David, Director of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders Industry Forum. The SMMT Industry Forum was established in the 1990s as a world-unique collaboration between the UK government and the UK automotive industry, against the background of the need to improve competitiveness. Arthur’s role at the conference was to talk about what ‘pure Lean’ is – where it comes from, how it’s evolved, and what the principles of Lean Manufacturing are. He shared his experiences of working in Japan and Europe, and how Lean tools and techniques have been applied in these different cultures.
Bernadette Hurst, Assistant Chief Executive at the North West Improvement and Efficiency Partnership (NWIEP). The purpose of NWIEP is to secure continuous improvement in the public sector within the region. Bernadette gave a presentation about the challenges that public sector organisations face, and will face in the near future. She spoke about what those challenges mean in terms of efficiency, and how successful organisations in the future will need to radically re-think their approaches to service delivery.
Zoe Radnor is a reader in Operations Management at Warwick Business School. Zoe is widely published in this area and recently won a research grant to investigate the sustainability of Lean in public services. Zoe gave two presentations at the conference. The first was about Lean in the public sector; specifically how the principles, tools and techniques differ from Lean Manufacturing, and where Lean can and has had an impact in the public sector. The second focussed on critical success factors and barriers when implementing Lean in the public sector and provided delegates with a model for successful Lean implementation.
Andy Farrall, Executive Director for Environment and Regeneration at Warrington Borough Council. He is project champion for Warrington’s Operation Outstanding (their chosen approach to tailor the Lean philosophy and tools, to achieve their goals and ‘do more with less’). Andy’s presentation was from the perspective of an organisation that has faced some challenges to its rate of progress, and as such is near the beginning of its Lean journey. He discussed Warrington’s pioneering approach and spoke about the challenges of a ‘whole organisation’ approach to implementation, and emphasised the need for culture change and strong leadership.
Phil Mayhew, Director for Commissioning, and Julie Hood, Business Involvement Officer, both at Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council. The presentation that Phil and Julie gave was from the perspective of an organisation that has already seen benefits from Lean implementation. Their presentation outlined how they were successfully applying Lean principles within Children’s Services, and how they were currently implementing the same principles in other areas. It also included a review of the barriers that they had encountered, and the critical success factors that made a difference at Solihull.
Please click on the links below for the presentations.
Bernadette Hurst – Challenges Facing the Public Sector
Andy Farrall – Lean: The Warrington Story
Phil Mayhew and Julie Hood – Shaping Solihull
Conference Photographs
A summary of evaluations will be available shortly.