In the Brevard County Government, self-correction is a core value.

For the last four years, the County has embraced Lean Six Sigma to ramp up its operations in order to provide a more responsive and streamlined service to the public. From emergency management to information technology, the organization is realizing wins with tangible value for county residents.

What is Lean Six Sigma?

Lean Six Sigma provides a framework for organizations to improve their processes. An on-going practice, the methodology empowers the people closest to a task or a customer to provide real insight instead of waiting on a disconnected, top-down command from leadership.

Lean Six Sigma practitioners cycle through five steps in assessing existing processes: defining, measuring, analyzing, improving and controlling (DMAIC) to understand a process, its impact, and its potential to improve.

  • Define – The team defines the problem, the goal, the process and the customer
  • Measure – Current processes are measured to collect data
  • Analyze – Data is analyzed to determine causes of defects or waste in the process
  • Improve – The team develops, scrutinizes and implements an improved process
  • Control – Finally, the team ensures the process improvements are continued

Then, they do it all over again. Organizations embracing Lean Six Sigma are committed to continuous improvement, expecting to continue to evolve processes to gain efficiency and cut waste.

 Less is More

When organizations are able to trim down processes to realize greater efficiency, results are tangible for their customers. Brevard Country Government has achieved success through Lean Six Sigma in multiple areas, including:

  • Reduced permit application scanning deficiencies and incorrect application entries – By establishing scanning guidelines and a Building Permit intake checklist, the Planning and Development Group cut errors nearly in half (45% in scanning errors).
  • Doubled the amount of camp registrations completed – Registration jumped from 40.2% to 87.3% when errors were reduced, required signatures were limited and registration forms were updated. First-visit customer registrations increased as well.
  • Bolstered emergency management shelters in time for Hurricane Irma – The organization created the Brevard Emergency Support Team (BEST) to close training gaps for shelter workers who supported highly vulnerable populations during disasters. Since its inception, the BEST Shelter Worker training class had equipped nearly 1,000 County and School Board personnel, and during Hurricane Irma, more than 4,100 residents and 450 pets were sheltered across 21 shelters supported by 392 BEST team members. 
  • Cut county costs by going paperless – Brevard County realized more than $30,000 in annual savings by launching paperless pay remuneration statements, which reduced the need to purchase and use paper, postage, labor and toner.

 Better Together

Brevard County isn’t alone in turning to Lean Six Sigma to streamline its processes. Grappling with tight budgets, many government agencies have applied Lean Six Sigma to cut costs and boost efficiency.

In Chattanooga, Tennessee, the government launched City of Chattanooga Peak Academy, a two-level training for employees rooted in Lean Six Sigma concepts. Results were telling: City of Chattanooga employees identified 22 areas where waste could be eliminated, to the tune of $85,000 in savings.

Kern County, California, took a similar approach, embracing Lean Six Sigma methodology in the face of budget shortfalls. Instead of cutting jobs or services, Kern County opted to optimize the processes they had in place to deliver their services. They trained more than 200 employees in the methodology and established 25 deployment leaders to spearhead efforts within the government.

 For the Brevard County Government, “It’s really this simple,” Brevard County Manager Frank Abbate writes. “Lean Six Sigma helps us trim the fat in processes that bog down the delivery of County services.”

When processes aren’t bogged down, government agencies can realize faster delivery, a closer understanding of the customer’s voice, and less duplication and waste, passing along those cost and time savings benefits directly to the community they serve.