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Introduction
As a starting point, we acknowledge that this is a bit of a big subject and we are sure it is already a matter of discussion in some form or other across a range of public sector organisations. This said, we hope to further prompt and widen any existing debate on the application of Lean Six Sigma in the public sector.
The whole UK public sector has been under financial pressure since the global financial crisis of 2007 (HM Treasury, 2010). The scale of the cuts amounts to about 13 per cent of the overall public expenditure for 2010 with service cuts making up about 36 per cent of that (Taylor-Gooby, 2012). For example, savings target for Central UK Government Departments administration costs was £5.9bn by 2014/2015 (HM Treasury, 2010).
Budget cuts from central government have mean that all services have had to be reviewed, and across the country, public bodies have had to make judgements on the withdrawal or reduction of services.
However, the drive to look at public bodies and services has not only been caused by financial drivers and equality of access to services and tackling unfairness and inefficiencies have also been factors (HM Government, 2011).
There are undoubted examples of good practice across the public sector in the UK and these are referenced later in this paper, however in its 2010 report on the Independent Budget Review, the Scottish Government identified that further efficiencies could be identified from streamlining and simplification but that “[…] those efficiencies that are relatively easy to achieve have been achieved already and therefore a new, radical approach to how the public sector operates should be considered” (Scottish Government, 2010).
Lean Six Sigma is for manufacturing!
The external drivers for change: finance, inequalities and efficiencies have been established for a number of years, but identifying the need is not necessarily knowing the solution. The risk in times of financial hardship is that organisations feel trapped into making short-term gains to meet annualised budget reductions, but this can be at the cost of long-term service delivery. This is particularly true if an organisation has a reactive management system where efforts are directed to “firefighting” rather than taking control and delivering a determined long-term vision and...