Scottish University is Learning About Lean

You don’t hear much about lean in education. Only a few early adopters are starting to embrace lean to improve the operations of their institutions.

One I came across recently is the University of St. Andrews, located in Scotland. Three people there are part of a team involved in lean initiatives.

Their projects range from redesigning how undergraduates travel through the recruitment/admissions process to standardizing absence reporting procedures across all schools.

Among their achievements so far:

• In the library, cataloguing and processing of books lead time reduced from 50 days to 2 days
• In reception and registry, production of Student Status Letters lead time reduced from 7-10 days to 2 minutes
• Also in registry, large reduction in staff time needed to process student self-certifications while increasing availability of reporting

It is a pleasure to hear about successful efforts in an industry where lean is in such a nascent stage. I’m sure we will be hearing about more such examples in the future.

By the way, we have a book in this area scheduled for publication next year: Lean Higher Education by William Balzer of Bowling Green State University.