THE CHALLENGE

The City of Surrey has become a workplace of choice through their ongoing commitment to invest in their people and leaders. They consistently provide training, education, work experience, and self-development opportunities to their employees. One such endeavour is the Continuous Improvement Program with the goal of providing staff with the skills and knowledge to provide the best service to City residents and customers. Propel Solutions designed a tailored Continuous Improvement training program for the participants of their Emerging Leaders Program. Currently, Propel Solutions is the only accredited provider of Lean Bronze Certification training in Western Canada, through Propel University.

THE OBJECTIVES

Propel Solutions was engaged to provide training to City of Surrey staff in their Emerging Leaders Program in Lean principles and Continuous Improvement techniques to increase engagement and improve service delivery across their work areas. Training outcomes included learning to:

  • Use Value Stream Mapping to document the flow of materials and information
  • Optimize their value stream by identifying opportunities for operational improvement and increased customer value
  • Effectively manage day-to-day operations of their work area
  • Align their team with Lean thinking and organizational transformation
  • Identify Key Performance Measures and analyze these metrics to identify opportunities for improvement on an ongoing basis

THE RESULTS

The Value Stream Mapping and Managing a Lean Organization workshop training was delivered over a two-day period in June of 2016. Managers and leaders at the City of Surrey had the opportunity to examine one of their own value streams and apply improvement techniques to eliminate non-value adding steps and develop their ideal state. In addition, participants left the course with a blueprint to achieving an ideal state and were empowered to lead improvement efforts to deliver better service and increase customer value. Through guidance from the Managing a Lean Organization course, managers were able to identify their Key Performance Measures: Schedule Attainment, Quality, Service, and Speed. As they continue to identify ways to improve their team’s ability to meet customer needs, these skills and new management techniques will prove invaluable.