Continuous Process Improvement (Lean)
Improving agency processes by removing waste, increasing efficiency and elevating quality.
Since 2009, NHDES, through its Lean/Continuous Process Improvement Team, has been promoting and implementing process improvements and innovative approaches that maximize the department's efficiency and effectiveness to advance the agency's mission to protect and restore the environment and public health.
Lean is an organizational management system comprised of principles, tools and techniques focused on customer value. Lean tools are used by public, private and nonprofit sectors to improve processes by removing waste, increasing efficiency and elevating quality.
Watch NHDES staff try to answer the question: What is Lean? They get close, but not quite.Lean is a performance management system characterized by a collaborative approach to identify and minimize non-value-added activity (waste) in a process. It provides methods for ensuring that a company’s strategic goals drive progress and action at every level within the organization. Lean empowers employees to practice continuous improvement with incremental changes through problem solving.
Continuous process improvement involves several components for a successful project outcome. The make-up of Lean projects typically includes a charter that defines the scope and clear boundaries of the event, adoption of ground rules, a proposal for the approach to be used, deployment of a trained facilitator, an agreed-upon communication plan, and documentation of the work.
The NHDES Lean Team is comprised of individuals from the Commissioner’s Office, Air Resources Division, Water Division and the Waste Management Division who are educated in Lean techniques and dedicated to process improvement. One thing you won’t hear from a Lean practitioner is the phrase, “Because we’ve always done it that way.” The Lean Team is: Pictured (left to right): Muriel Lajoie, Mike Camacho, Chris Ialuna, Vince Perelli, Dean Robinson, Linda Magoon (Lean Coordinator), Nicole Gianunzio and Tom Guertin. (Camera shy: Sue Bergeron, Robert Cole, Jocelyn Degler, Jenn Dotson, Sara Johnson, Joe McCue, David Smith and Kristen Svendsen.)
