If there was ever a group that could benefit from the principles of Lean and Six Sigma, it would be the nonprofits. It’s not that they have more waste and inefficiencies than the private sector. But they tend to have fewer resources to help them to address the issue.
What makes a difference is when organizations with the know-how and the resources step up to fill the knowledge gap. That’s what’s happening in several instances in Ohio, with different initiatives that aim to equip nonprofits with the training they need to create improvements in their operations.
In one case, Akron Children’s Hospital provided Lean Six Sigma training and certification of two employees of the Akron-Canton Regional Foodbank. The costs of Six Sigma training, even when nonprofits understand the benefits, tend to rule it out as a process improvement option. At about $6,000 per person, it’s hard to justify when resources are already stretched.
But the hospital knew there was a need to streamline processes at the food bank to ensure food to speed the time it took to get into the hands of people who needed it. The ultimate goal was to help the food bank build internal capacity to become more efficient, saving money as well as enabling better service to their constituents.
And it’s worked.
The time between food donation and delivery was 92 days when the program started. Today, it takes 39 days for food to be received, sorted, inspected, packed and delivered. And as more people learn and apply Lean and Six Sigma principles, the teams have a lot of confidence that the gap can be narrowed even more – perhaps even in the 20-day range.
Another area of improvement
The long holding periods created a cumbersome inspection process to make sure nothing had expired since the previous inspection. With faster turnarounds, that step was eliminated and the foodbank went from storing 180,000 pounds of donations to 60,000.
In another initiative, the Cleveland Public Library has received scholarship funding from the State of Ohio to get several staffers trained in Lean after an external consultant showed them the benefits in a first project. Training is being done at LeanOhio Boot Camp through Cleveland State University’s Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs. The boot camp is tailored to public sector needs.
The library’s initial project successfully cured a large backlog of materials ordered and shipped through a consortium of libraries that share materials. The improvement – with no overnight carryover of materials since the project was completed – made the library a convert. And developing internal experts was deemed the smart way to go to not just save taxpayers money, but to be able to utilize Lean tools on a more regular basis.
The difference has been appreciable at both organizations, with the experience gained equipping them with fresh perspectives to not just improve their processes but to ultimately better serve their communities.
