It was very good to hear Andrew Christie on the BBC’s Today programme this morning. He is the director of children’s services for the
three London Boroughs of Westminster, Kensington-and-Chelsea and Hammersmith-and-Fulham.
Andrew described how the councils have been implementing Lean management
to cut by half the time taken to complete cases in family court proceedings. He
told the BBC’s Evan Davis that the changes were inspired by the approach
developed for manufacturing by Toyota in the 1960s. The key to the Lean
approach was bringing together at exactly the right time and exactly
the right place exactly those resources required to produce the service. He
thought that the approach was based on commonsense.
You can read more about this initiative at:
You may remember I am a big fan of Lean.
It is really encouraging to hear about how successful this initiative
in the centre of London is proving. If you want to find out more about the Lean
approach I suggest you look at:
Radnor et al -
Evaluation of the Lean Approach to Business Management and its Use in the
Public Sector Scottish Executive Social Research 2006
This can be downloaded free at:
