Steve Demel, Director of Purchasing at Tacoma Public Schools saw an opportunity to improve processing times for customer purchase requests from other departments within the school district. To help address the issue, he turned to lean project management techniques which helped empower his staff to make quicker decisions and improve problem solving in the department.

1. Going Lean
How Tacoma Public Schools streamlined its purchasing, warehouse and print
shop by applying lean project management principles to its operations.
October 11, 2017 • Presenter by Steve Demel, Director of Purchasing, Tacoma Public Schools

2. Agenda
● Introduction
● What is Lean and why should it matter to school districts?
● What were the key drivers behind Tacoma Public Schools’ decision to go Lean?
● How did Tacoma Public Schools implement Lean practices?
○ How did you train the organization?
○ What systems and tools did you put in place?
○ How did you set goals for the team?
● What were the results of going Lean?

3. Tacoma Public Schools is the
3rd largest district in
Washington state serving more
than 30,000 PK-12 students
across 53 schools.
The district employs more than
5,000 staff, making it one of the
largest employers in the state.
DISTRICT PROFILE
Tacoma Public
Schools

4. Meet Steve.
Steve Demel is director of purchasing at Tacoma
Public Schools. He has served the district for more
than 11 years, and prior to that worked in
government purchasing for the State of
Washington for several years.
In his role, he is responsible for purchasing,
warehousing and print operations throughout the
district.

5. What is Lean?

6. Click here to view a recording of this webinar.

7. “Lean” refers to an approach to project management that
eliminates waste and increases transparency by helping
organizations more effectively:
WHAT IS LEAN?
ControlImproveAnalyzeMeasureDefine

8. What does going “Lean” mean to Tacoma Public Schools?
Going Lean
● We took the simple approach that
“Lean” means improving processes and
starting by looking at where is there
waste and inefficiency.
● We loosely use that as a way to tackle
the “7 Wastes” or at least the ones that
are most relevant to us in purchasing.

9. Why go lean?

10. Click here to view a recording of this webinar.

11. Why go lean?
Going Lean
● In purchasing specifically, a lot of the waste we
identified was related to wait times and
processing times.
○ We wanted to eliminate the inefficiencies
that we identified.
○ We wanted to deliver faster turnaround
times to improve customer outcomes.
○ We wanted to empower employees to be
part of the solution to these challenges we
were facing.
➔ Approvals would
sometimes take several
days.
➔ Lost paperwork.
➔ Slow turnaround times.

12. How to go Lean?

13. Click here to view a recording of this webinar.

14. How to go lean?
Going Lean
● We started by giving everyone enough training so that they were
familiar with the 7 wastes.
● This isn’t about becoming experts in “lean” this is about looking at our
processes and taking action.
○ We wanted a simple way of identifying inefficiencies and then
pick the low-hanging fruit to tackle.
○ That helped build momentum and became infectious.
● One of the tools that we came up with to get people engaged was
something we called “Sticky Note” teams. We encouraged everybody
to look at problems/issues/things that needed fixing. We’d ask for
volunteers to form sticky note teams to take an hour a week to solve
problems affecting their work.

15. ● We didn’t want to “over train” staff.
● We wanted them to be familiar enough
with the general concepts so that they
could apply them in real-life.
● It’s important to find low-hanging fruit in
order to build momentum. The success
becomes infectious!
Going Lean
How to go lean?

16. ● One of the tools Tacoma used successfully
was to form “Sticky Note” Teams.
○ They encouraged staff to identify
problems that needed fixing.
○ Volunteers would form teams to
address the issue and spend one
hour a week to try and solve the
problem.
Going Lean
How to go lean?

17. Where did you get started?

18. Click here to view a recording of this webinar.

19. Where did you get started?
Going Lean
● When we initially started it became quickly apparent
that other organizations that we work with (other parts
of the district) were not ready for process change.
● Our primary focus initially was internal processes
because other departments were resistant to change.
○ Once we show that it works some of these other
departments will come on board.
● One of the first projects we identified was moving our
P-Card forms online with Informed K12 (formerly Chalk
Schools).

20. Results

21. Click here to view a recording of this webinar.

22. What were the results at Tacoma?
Going Lean
● We created a better process than the old paper
process we were using.
● Other departments started to see how we were using
that and saw the gains in efficiency.
● Data after the first six months showed that approvals
were being reduced from a matter of days to a few
hours.
● Process is getting us much better data on what
happened with the spend so that we can pay it
faster. And it contributed to helping to grow the
rebate.

23. “It will really cut down the turnaround
time. Right now it takes about 45 days
on average, hopefully it will cut down to
a week or two. In the past we didn’t
know where the form was. We’re no
longer missing receipts and it’s kept us
way more accountable.”
IMPROVED OPERATIONAL EFFICIENCY

24. $500,000
Tacoma was able to generate additional rebates thanks to
streamlining its P-Card process.

25. 1.5 hours
Sent to sign time reduced from 24 hours to 1.5 hours.

26. 4x faster
Median processing time reduced from 4 days to less than 1 day.

27. Additional Resources

28. Click here to view a recording of this webinar.

29. Additional Resources?
Going Lean
Visit www.informedk12.com for more resources like this.
Assess your district’s processes here:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/goinglean