Deploying Lean Thinking to Improve
Graduate Quality and Service Delivery
in Higher Education
Rodger L. NKUMBWA
Copperbelt University
2010
Paper Presented at the National Symposium on Research &
Innovation in Education, University of Zambia - 2010
Introduction
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Governments in general and higher education
sector in particular face a productivity
imperative.
Growth in new national priorities and citizens’
demand for improved higher education
service delivery requires government to do
more and do it better.
The need to increase productivity in higher
education sector is obvious to all and critical.
Introduction
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If higher education service delivery is to
improve, valuable insights could be gained by
looking at what is driving the corporate sector
and global world class organizations.
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This is mainly innovative management
practices such as Quality Management, Lean
Thinking and Six-Sigma Strategies.
Introduction
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While significant progress has been made in
quest to make higher education better, the
motivation to change the current model lies in
the number of challenges that need to be
addressed today including;
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Education financial deficit in most countries i.e. Zambia
Capacity Constraints
Political Concerns about Operational Costs
Less Motivated Workface
Staff Shortages and
Low Quality of Graduates
Examples of Lean Thinking Deployment
in Higher Education Environments
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Lean Thinking has been deployed at various
institutions around the world including;
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Cardiff University, Wales
Coventry University, England
Park University, US
Michigan State University, US
University of New Orleans, US
University of Iowa, US
Colorado Public Schools and
Malaysian Schools
Source:
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Reed and Berry [2], Inozu et al. [3], Cermak [4].
Globalized Competitive Market Environment
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The needs of the customers are constantly and
rapidly changing,
The choice ever increasing
The need of higher quality graduates and
services ever rising,
Strategic higher learning organizations can no
longer afford the lost profit opportunities, less
customer satisfaction and delayed graduates.
Regional and International Competition Pressure
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The driving force for improved graduate
quality and service delivery is the regional and
international competition pressure
Gish [5] of Delloitte Consulting suggests that,
"By applying Lean principles, routine
business operations could be simplified, more
rational procedures established, and
repetition reduced (if not eliminated), thereby
accelerating core business processes and
responding more quickly to customer needs."
Exploring Lean Thinking for Higher
Education Quality Improvement
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Lean Thinking Impression
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Lean is a way of thinking that was introduced by
Toyota in the 1960’s as a systematic approach to
identifying and eliminating institution process
waste or non-value-adding operations through
continuous improvement with the goal of creating
value for all the stakeholders.
Exploring Lean Thinking for Higher
Education Quality Improvement
9
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According to research at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(MIT), Sloan School of Management and Lean Enterprise Initiave it
is reported that Lean Business uses less of everything compared to
traditional production or operations system.
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MIT Lean Research further outlines that, lean operations does the
following:
– It optimizes human resources effort
– Space is optimized leading to savings
– Need for capital investment is minimized
– Decreases the amount of supplies consumed and
– Uses less time to produce and deliver the required services or
products
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It can be seen that, the key principles of lean are based on identifying
“wastes” from the customer perspective and eliminating them.
Lean Thinking in Education
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Lean Thinking focuses on:
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Eliminating waste in organization processes,
Lean is not about eliminating people but considering
them as team associates and educating them as
value creators for the stakeholders.
Lean is about expanding organization capacity by
reducing costs and shortening production or
service delivery cycle times.
It is also about understanding what is important to
the customer experience and delivering it on the
right time in the right amount all the time.
Quality Strategy for
Higher Education Business
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The business of higher education today has
received greater competition owing to rapid
changes in the past decades.
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The focus now is on the bottom-line and the
need to get the competitive edge for all its
clients throughout the value chain.
Quality Strategy for
Higher Education Business
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Now is the better time for institution of higher
education to demonstrate that they can offer
what other can not.
As Rozsnyai [7] puts it that,
"…the quality of the University is similarly to
love: intangible, but existent; perceptible, but
not quantifiable, transient, so that one has to
endeavour to it."
Quality Strategy for
Higher Education Business
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Emilian [8] President of Centre for Lean Business
suggests that, among the challenges to be faced by
higher education institutions administrators in few
years to come will include:
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Oversupply of capable higher education institutions,
Study programs (degrees) that are not differentiated from the
competitors,
Growth of for-profit education institutions and
Competition based on the pricing.
In addition, education standards will become standardised
around the globe because of the ever rising quality assurance
and monitoring bodies within regions and international.
What is Quality in Higher Education?
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Quality is a relative subject related to the extent
of the business processes results and the
desired outcomes.
It may be stated as, 'exceptional or excellence',
'perfection or consistence' (zero defect),
'fitness for purpose', 'value for money' and
'transformational'.
What is Quality in Higher Education?
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The focus of education quality should be on:
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What students have learnt,
What they know,
What they can do and
What their attitudes are, as a consequence of their
interactions with their teachers, departments and higher
education institutions.
What is Quality in Higher Education?
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Emilian [8], President of Centre for Lean Business, a
Management Consulting firm clearly puts it that,
"…the time is right for higher education
administrators, faculty and staff to begin
applying Lean Management to their business.
The consequences of not doing so could be
fatal.“
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What is the difference between
Traditional Education and Lean Education?
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Lean Education believes that degree
programmes delivered and education
curriculum adopted should be based on the
concept that production, which is training of
graduates, must be driven by customer or
national demand in the upstream of the value
chain and not just naïve forecasts.
Lets look at the comparison of Traditional
Education to Lean Education Approach
Argument
Theme
Traditional
Higher Education
Lean Thinking
Higher Education
Organization Culture
Culture of royalty, favor, obedience
and labour friction
Harmonious culture of involvement based on
long-term development of human
resource
Institution Operations
Division of labour and no problem
solving skills for the workforce
Smart tools that assume standardized work
and procedures, strength in problem
identification and experimentation
Customer Relations
Management
Produces Graduates needed by
employers in large quantities at
acceptable quality locally
Produces Graduates according to employers
requirements with zero defects or to
world class standards. Continuously get
feedback on graduates performance
Education Business
Strategy
Graduate-focused strategy on
exploiting economies of scale
Customer/Employer-focused strategy on
identifying and exploiting shifting
competitive edge and sustainability
University
Management
Hierarchical structures that
encourage orders and
discourage the flow of
information that unveils errors
and deficiencies
Flat structure that encourage initiative and
flow of information that highlights
defects, errors and deficiencies as well
as promote innovation and continuous
improvement in all activities
Graduate Inventory
Levels
Large number of part time and/or
repeater students
Small number or no repeater students.
Right first time all the time
Educator or Teacher
Empowerment
Little input into University
Operations
High responsibility for identifying and
implementing quality
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What is the Higher Education Product?
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It should be noted that, the student is not really the
product; instead,
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The product is the education of the student.
Students need to be considered as a co-workers who are
actively participating in the design, execution and creation of
the product.
Therefore, the student should be involved in the
continuous improvement of the institution processes
in quest for quality creation of the product, namely the
Graduate.
The student is the host of the education product.
Who are the Customers for Higher
Education Product?
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The customers for Higher Education Product may be segmented
as follows:
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Student – this is the primary customer who is the host of the education
product and hence, the co-manager of the education production line and
should always be considered first when defining quality in education.
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Student Sponsors – parents, family members, governments and
organisations who pays for the students costs.
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Potential Employers – these are the secondary customers and are
organisations relying on the education of the student upon graduating to
achieve their organization goals.
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Society at Large – pays substantial costs of education through taxes and
requires future participation of the student as an educated citizen and
expects them to contribute positively to the general welfare of society.
What are the Customers Expectations
from Higher Education Product?
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The education customers’ expectations and society at large may
be segmented as follows:
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Knowledge – this is what enables students to continuously learn after
graduating in relation to what they already know
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Know-how – this is what enables students to apply knowledge to work
environments and this should be from different areas of learning
covered
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Wisdom – this is the ability to distinguish what is vital from what is a
not vital and set priority to resource management.
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Character – this may be said to be a combination of knowledge,
know-how and wisdom coupled with motivation to deliver value for
the stakeholders.
Ten Wastes in Higher Education
Environment
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Learning to see what is wrong in higher
education environment is the beginning of
change.
Waste in Quality Management is defined as,
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Any institution activity or operation performed that
does not add any value to the customer satisfaction
or experience, ( i.e. student, employer and society).
Ten Wastes in Higher Education
Environment
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Motion – this involves movement of people (educators, students,
technicians, administrators, etc) and/or teaching equipments that does
not add value to the student learning experience.
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Examples are looking for information, forms, materials, educators and equipments
located far from the point of operation.
Waiting Time – this is the idle time created in the University processes
when people, information, equipments or materials are not at hand for
use.
– Examples is when students are waiting for appointments, procedures and
expert guidance. Others are invasion of teaching time, class interruptions,
poorly scheduled meetings and late arrivals by parties involved.
– Causes of all these may include poor understanding of the standard time
required to do a task and lack of accountability for delivering on time.
Uncertainty – this is when educators doing the work are not confident
about the best way “best-practice” to perform the tasks.
– Examples, unclear teaching methodology, unclear course curriculum,
unclear laboratory procedures.
– Causes include lack of standardized specifications of procedures of work.
Ten Wastes in Higher Education
Environment
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Defects – include University activities that contain errors or lack
something of value.
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Processing – this include the activities in the processes of service
delivery that do not add value from the customer perspective.
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Examples include; teaching errors, presentation errors such as at seminars,
graduation ceremonies, lectures, etc., documents errors, data entry errors, variation
of same task outcomes, service delivery errors, product (graduate) errors and lost
records.
Causes of these may include lack of understanding of what 'defect-free' University
processes are and lack of standardization in work processes and quality
management.
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Examples include extra unnecessary steps, too many approvals, requirements
confusion, charting during working hours, missing procedure requirement and too
much regulatory paper work.
Causes of these may include poor work area design that does not promote smooth
value flow, complex and multiple data forms, as well as use of obsolete procedures
and forms.
Others include creating reports no one reads unclear roles and responsibilities and
repeated manual entry of student data or results.
Ten Wastes in Higher Education
Environment
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Over-Production – includes redundant work such as duplicate work
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Examples are multiple forms with same information, re-creating already
existing knowledge, teaching previously taught curriculum, creating a
new report when the data exist in the different department, creating
departmental silos as well as protectionism.
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Causes include poor communication between departments and staff.
High Inventory – this is when there is more material at hand than is
required to do the work.
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Examples include overstocked outdated books, poor understanding of
supply and demand, obsolete equipments not discarded, unread
emails, unfinished projects, files not worked on, unresolved challenges.
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Others are unnecessary work-in-progress (repeating or part-time
students) and finished products beyond what is needed on the normal
basis (producing more graduates in degree with less or no
demand).
Ten Wastes in Higher Education
Environment
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Underutilized Resources – this includes organization
workforce, time, facilities and equipments available,
which are not used to get the optimum benefit.
– Examples include minimal hours of operation for the
library, computer facilities and laboratory for the
students. Note that, this is not referring to resource
stressing, but just maximizing on the benefits that can
be offered by the available resources.
– Closed University culture to innovation and change,
untapped areas of passion for staff and choosing shortterm cost reductions that do not motivate staff are
among other critical factors in higher learning
institutions.
Ten Wastes in Higher Education
Environment
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Poor Communication – this involves information and data waste.
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All institutions experience problems nearly every day, which need to be solved
by different people in the organization.
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To solve most of these problems, information is required and now when the
information, which is useful to solving the problem at hand, is not available or is
difficult to retrieve, inefficiency in problem solving cannot be avoided.
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Information should be availed to all people in the organization at the
earliest possible time, whether positive or negative. Good information practice
include; annual audited financial reports which can be posted on websites,
annual key performance indicators (KPI's) such as profit margins or losses
published to all employees for review and improvement.
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Misused Resources – this is when alocated resources ior a particular
project are diverted owing to some special or personal interests.
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This in most cases cannot be recovered and is not replaced at all.
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Best practice is to stick to the annual budget and adopt the long-term
philosophy over short-term or personal gains.
Deploying “Lean Thinking Initiative” for
Higher Education Excellence
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University/College Business Transformation Council
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This will involve institution wise deployment of the quality improvement strategies
that will focus on core University/College business processes.
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Strategic quality projects should be identified and problem solving teams
established including the Project Charter and Quality Leader.
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Establish “Quality Improvement Charter”
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Universities should establish a Quality Improvement Charter (QIC) which will
act or work as a 'Quality Improvement Centre'. This is where clients like
students, staff and employees can report quality issues and make suggestions for
improvements. Must be headed by a Quality Professional who will look into the
quality issues all round the University/College including training.
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Establish “Quality Problem Solving Teams”
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This involves creation of teams for strategic opportunity or operational weakness
determination and analysis with focus on the key customers and analysis of the
critical business process through the various faculties or departments.
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Problem solving projects should be established which will be linked to the
strategic “Lean Thinking Initiative”. Critical few projects will be identified to
highlight the current state of the University performance and establish priority
areas where resources may be focused.
Conclusion…
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This paper has presented the quality view of service
delivery and graduate quality in higher education
environment.
The author believes that, better understanding of
society expectations from higher education
institutions and academic processes is vital for
performance re-engineering of most today's higher
education institutions, if excellence is to be achieved.
It is hoped that, with the areas covered, most education
stakeholders are edified about the need for change of
the current practice and the new meaning of quality in
today and tomorrow higher education institutions.
…Conclusion
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Among the expected benefits of deploying lean
thinking in higher education environment include:
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Simplification of both the academic and administrative processes,
Elimination of waste activities or operations
Creation of value flow in the institution
Reduction of activity cycle time and graduate lead time
Reduction of error rates and delays
Increased institution bottom-line due to massive savings
Improved productivity and efficiency in the value delivery
Corporate image and Sustainability are enhanced.
All these things with no massive monetary investment required
but willingness to adapt and change especially by
management, who are vision carriers.
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