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Introduction
This view point paper is developed from one of the pilot case studies undertaken by Police Scotland in partnership with Heriot-Watt University. Like many public sector organisations, the police service has faced significant budget challenges over the past ten years and has had to undertake wide-ranging restructure programmes to maintain high-quality services at low operational costs. This is combined against the backdrop of Police Scotland being a new organisation created from what was at the time the largest public sector merger in the UK history.
While the case study referenced in this paper was only one of more than 60 which were undertaken in the initial roll out of Lean Six Sigma (LSS), this example was specifically related to work undertaken as part of the change management programme and as such has been used to provide a focus for the wider organisational learning which is intended to be used to inform the wider organisational structures, approach and readiness factors to assist both Police Scotland and other public sector organisations who may be embarking on or reviewing or refreshing their organisational change initiatives such as LSS as a strategy to achieve and sustain service and operational excellence.
Background to Police Scotland
Police Scotland is the national police service in Scotland, UK and was created in April 2013 by the merger of eight regional police services and two national agencies. Police Scotland provides all policing services to the 5.3 million citizens of Scotland and has 23,000 staff of which 17,234 are warranted police officers. The service has an annual budget of almost £1.1bn but like all public sector organisations, Police Scotland has significant challenges through budget reductions and associated savings targets. Police Scotland remains a relatively young organisation with a significant ongoing transformation programme. As part of the transformation and organisational change programme, the organisation adopted a continuous improvement (CI) approach utilising LSS tools, principles, concepts and methodology.
The case study referenced in this paper relates to the efficient and effective management processes of a project running within the overall portfolio of change and provides an example of one of the deployments undertaken within the service. At the time of the LSS deployment, the project was one of 43 running within the portfolio, but was unusual...