Business Accent

Making Processes Lean

Praful Gharpure discusses how Urban Local Bodies can transform e-Governance by adopting the Lean methodology

As per the 2001 Census, urban areas in India account for 27.8% of the population. About one-third of Urban India (71 million) lives in metropolitan cities. The number of such cities in India has increased from 23 in 1991 to 35 in 2001. Urbanization is associated with increased incomes, improved health, higher literacy, improved quality of life and other benefits, at the same time it results in strain on the physical and social infrastructure.

Job profiles in mature urban areas are driving the need for an effective, efficient and economic urban service provider. Urban Local Bodies(ULB) i.e. Municipal Corporation and Urban Development authorities play this role and the use of Information Technology (IT) via e-governance initiatives is gaining momentum in the provision of the urban services to a growing number of urban customers.

ULBs and other government departments in India are implementing IT infrastructure initiatives aiming at automating their current processes. As a result, the implementation is happening in silo style and lacks the required interlinkages resulting in lots of rework or duplication of effort. With the variation of volume and nature of services, making the existing process Lean, i.e. simplifying procedures is the need of the hour.

IT has to stay ahead of service demand to ensure an efficient service delivery mechanism. This paper highlights on how IT can be leveraged to make the processes Lean to create value for the end-user i.e. Common Man.

Information Technology Enabled Services (ITES) providers have started shifting to Ties II cities and this has triggered off urbanization in these cities. The majority of these cities are classifiable as metropolitan (with a million plus population). This has resulted in the densification of urban areas. However, upgradation of physical infrastructure has failed to keep pace. Urbanization is associated with increased income, improved health, higher literacy, improved quality of life and other benefits. At the same time, it results in strain on the physical and social infrastructure. ULBs or Municipal Corporations are required to provide these as part of their statutory function. There is need for ULBs to gear up and face the challenges, which are coming their way. Provision and maintenance of efficient services is a key requirement for future investments in these areas. The shift to e-Governance is a positive indication of this.

Thanks to the existence of multiple entities, the fragmentation of service delivery in Indian cities is a fact. These entities often map to different departments under the state or central government. The net result is that the ULB has limited control over key services provided in its jurisdiction affecting the statutory functions that a ULB is required to perform. The use of IT via e-Governance initiatives is gaining momentum in the provision of urban services to a growing number of urban customers. However, e-Governance initiatives of various departments are carried out independent of each other; as such, the impact of these initiatives is diluted for the lack of a [sufficiently large] user base. The primary reason for this is the fact that the IT implementation is carried out at a department's process level. The dependent information from other departments for the same user has to be provided by the user himself leading to multiple handoffs of the data and manual effort on part of user and the departmental staff. As a result, users go through a series of rework loops for want of information and information updating subsequent to any transaction carried out.

This paper intends to highlight the benefits of making the interdepartmental processes Lean by leveraging IT solutions. It shall aid in taking the information until the end user who is the Customer.

Concept of Lean

Lean techniques were originally developed to reduce waste in manufacturing industry. Several organizations across various industries have seen significant improvements in process execution thanks to Lean measures or programs being adopted. The adoption of Lean programs helps in following aspects.

• It helps identify areas for change that can help you get faster turnaround.
• It calls for defining goals based on customer needs and product focus.
• These practices also make it inherently easier to comply with regulatory mandates.

The current discussion is in the context of interdependent services offered by different departments for the same end user. Such group of services is referred as the Value Stream in Lean terminology.

Value Stream Mapping is a typical exercise in any Lean implementation. This exercise helps to identify the fat in the process i.e. non-value added activities, rework loops within the processes, idle time, handoffs etc. Such components elongate the cycle time of the process thereby value of the process reduces

leading to the dissatisfaction of the end customer. The subsequent sections of this paper illustrate this for a typical record updating processes followed in majority of Indian cities.

Illustration 1 outlines the process with interdependencies or handoffs amongst multiple stakeholders.

Illustration 2 highlights the cycle time considering the approximate time required for the activities within the process

Illustration 3 gives the ITIL view of urban services

Illustration 4 gives a view of the transformed processes

Illustration 5 - Reduction in Cycle time

As is’ process

The existing processes i.e. Value Stream, demonstrated here is for the activities involved in the registration of documents and updating of records. The end customers here are the buyer and the seller. The customer is required to work with multiple processes ranging across different departments to get the records updated leading to series of rework loops to gather information first and updating other records post transaction. It is ironical that all these departments have their own process IT enabled partially, however the cycle time of transactions carried out have not significantly improved.

In any Lean / Six Sigma initiative the end-user, i.e. customer requirements are the starting point. As such, customer expectations are the basic requirements, which are the Voice of the Customer (VOCs) for the service under consideration. This links to Critical to Quality (CTQs) parameters for the process under consideration. While considering the CTQs for a service it is equally important to review the activity pattern, which a user follows while using the process to avail the services. The mapping of a Value Stream brings out the bottlenecks within such flows.

In a Lean initiative once the mapping of the Value Stream is done, the next important activity is the identification of potential value traps in the process. These are identified through the assessment of the Value Stream with the aid of activity level information. These are gathered either from system data or through sample surveys. The information given below is based on information gathered while going through the process. The cycle times mentioned are indicative and mostly on lower side as these vary from city to city.

IT Framework for Urban Service Provision

IT implementation in Urban India is happening in bits and pieces. IT has found a place on the agenda of all departments; however, what is lacking is an integrated approach to its rollout and effective sharing of IT infrastructure to economize initiatives. This builds a case for an integrated approach for the delivery of Urban Services backed by efficient service support mechanism involving a user interface. Shared IT infrastructure and the adoption of an ITIL framework is a potential solution. ITIL is a set of best practices intended to facilitate the delivery of high quality information technology (IT) services. The acronym ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) is a Registered Trade Mark of the United Kingdom's Office of Government Commerce (OGC).ITIL processes aim at achieving high financial quality and value in IT operations. These procedures are supplier-independent and have been developed to provide guidance across the breadth of IT infrastructure, development, and operations. ITIL is the most widely accepted approach to IT Service Management (ITSM) today.

The best practices documentation forming ITIL-Version 2 is divided in two parts namely Service Delivery and Service support. Version 2 gave way to Version 3 in 2008. Service Support and Service Delivery together consist of 12 disciplines that constitute the framework for the provision and management of effective IT services. The Service Delivery is primarily concerned with the proactive and forward-looking services that the business requires from its ICT provider in order to deliver desired services to its users. It is focused on the business as the Customer of the ICT services. The Service Support is focused on the Users of the ICT services and is primarily concerned with ensuring access to the appropriate services to support the business functions.

Use of ITIL best practices is well known in organizations providing services across geographical locations via a suitable user interface. While providing these services the organizations within themselves have different IT applications supported by different teams. ITIL provides the framework for effective provision of the services via efficient co-ordination using the twelve ITIL disciplines. In the context of urban services, a similar situation exists where in individual service provider is interacting with same set of users independently. As a result, the processes followed result in series of rework loops, duplication of efforts and non-value added works. At the same time, the optimal use of IT infrastructure is not achieved. Application of an ITIL framework to the provision of urban services shall result in mutual benefits to the providers as well as its users

Transformation of process with IT Service Provision Framework

As is evident from illustration 1, there is a significant amount of rework, idle time, delays, handoffs in the existing process thereby it takes 533 hours i.e. 23 business days. Further, the trips to various offices have effects like customers losing their working hours, trips generating traffic on road plus the agony that one has to goes through.

Illustration 3 above gives the conceptual framework for interdepartmental information exchange with a common user interface. Since the individual departments have carried out IT implementation, the deployment of framework can be channeled through the ULB. The development of citizen interface at ULB website and deployment of interoperability solution across applications in various departments can lead to acceleration of the process steps.

The solution development in a Lean initiative involves a group activity with all the stakeholders to:

• Identify solutions with usage of techniques like structured brainstorming.
• Assessment of technical feasibility of Solution and arriving at a consensus regarding a solution.
• Workability of solution considering the technical expertise at individual groups.
• Effort estimation.
• The ownership of the solution from an implementation standpoint.

Such an exercise is carried out through a four to five day workshop referred to as a Kaizen workout in Lean terminology. This reduces the time normally spent in decision making for the solution selection and implementation. Such a solution is illustrated above as the transformed process. The potential impact of the solution is depicted in Illustration 5 below. It outlines the change in cycle time for the same set of activities in current process outlined above. The reduction in cycle time for the processes can be to the extent of 90% i.e. reduction from 23 to 2-3 days.

Value derived from the Transformation

The intent of e-Governance is to accelerate current processes by automating the same and making them accessible to the end-user. The part of making the processes accessible to end-user is at its infancy in the majority of cases. However, this aspect if coupled with interdepartmental information sharing has the potential to transform the performance of a process. It can also lead to value enhancement for both the process owner and the customer. Table 1 below brings out the striking features of the process transformation described above.

e-Governance is a mechanism to bring administration within reach of the end user who is the customer for the services and provides the revenue. Any such initiative goes through four important stages namely:

• Information sharing: Providing static information with a Web site.
• Automation: Making the existing processes IT enabled
• Transaction: Making the process accessible to the end-user to carry out functions like transactions, service requests etc.
• Transformation: Creating new methods of public service delivery like process transformation with information sharing amongst agencies to deliver value of the service to see the end-user happily willing to pay for it.

ULBs and other government departments in India are implementing IT infrastructure initiatives aiming at automating their current processes.

As a result, the implementation is happening in silo style and lacks the required interlink ages resulting in lots of rework or duplication of effort. With the variation of volume and nature of services, making the existing process Lean i.e. simplifying procedures shall enable the administration to take the IT enabled services to the common man i.e. the end-user.

References

• Lean Six Sigma for Service by Michael L George.
• Ten Key Technologies for Lean Process Improvement by Nari Kannan.
• Lean Six Sigma Frameworks for Software Industry by Anurag Kumar and Sourabh Moudgil.
• Towards a better urban e-Governance - ITIL® way by the Author eGov Journal Oct -2007.

The author is an Architect -Urban Planner and a Certified Six Sigma Black Belt. He is working with TCS as an IT Process Consultant. He also specializes in ITIL methodology. Email: pc.gharpure@tcs.com