Citywide Improvements Lead to New Culture, Big Savings

Company Profile: The City of Cincinnati provides many basic services to the citizens of Cincinnati, including fire and police protection, solid waste management, recreational activities, greenspace management, community and economic development, water and sewer management, and maintenance of the public infrastructure. The administration of the City is through the city manager, who executes the policy direction set by the mayor and city council by managing 17 City departments and approximately 6,500 employees.

Project: The City was $2 million dollars over budget, had limited resources and faced increasing demands for improved service delivery. Process improvements were not being effectively implemented and leveraged across agencies and within departments.

Departments worked in silos with little integration or teamwork among agencies. TechSolve used a three-phased approach consisting of an assesment of City staff, customized solutions for City leadership and facilitators, and process redesign implementation to drive Lean throughout the City’s organization and create a culture of continuous improvement.

From the information generated from a citywide assessment of the organization, TechSolve was able to develop a prioritized plan of action to focus on key improvement opportunities.  Using Lean and process improvement techniques, facilitators documented 63 process redesigns and 48 continuous improvements. One of those redesigns focused on internal city process and streamlining police recruitment. Another involved improving external service delivery of the sanitary sewer easement process.

Results: Since the project, the City of Cincinnati has progressed significantly in its implementation of “Lean Government.” Following the three-phased approach to implementing Lean improvement, City leaders sought to modify the culture of their organization with Lean process improvement techniques.

• Developed a standardized approach to identifying, prioritizing, and implementing process
• Identified 111 process redesigns and continuous improvements across all City departments
• 35% reduction in overall time from applicant sign-up to starting police academy from 20 to 13 months
• 50% reduction in overall time from receipt of engineering plans to recording of easement from 314 to 156 days
• Began to embed a culture of continuous improvement throughout the City organization

“TechSolve’s Lean process training provided the City of Cincinnati staff the technical ability to implement continuous improvements which increased the effectiveness and decreased the costs of selected city services.”

Former Assistant to the City Manager & Innovative Service Solutions Manager