Cases Cranleigh Metropolitan Council

By: Dewi Annisa & Nagata Wiguna

Cases Introduction
Cranleigh Metropolitan Council (CMC) is a council that serves a local resident with
population around 350.000 people and have an employee around 14.000 members of staff
distributed in seven directorates or department. The directorates are Chief Executive Office,
Children’s Services, Education & Community Services, Housing, Urban Environment, Law &
Property, and Finance. CMC is known as a top performing local authorities in the country. Even
known as the top performer, Maeve Andrews, their Chief Executive wants to improve their
services provided.
She explained the opportunity she can take is in location area and contact point, she stated
CMC provides several hundred services for their customers, which have many different access
points in different buildings with different opening times and using different systems. Her idea is
to make One-Stop-Shop model for CMC, where the services brings in one places together with
one contact point. This improvement is made to improve efficiency and also savings for CMC.
To prepare the transformation, the council seconded Tony Templeton from a firm of
transformation consultants to lead an internal team to see is the concept are feasible. If it feasible,
then Tony has to construct an implementation plan. To be able implement the concept, the team
uses a lean approach to see the idea are feasible and construct the implementation plan. But still
they have to be flexible for the needs of each area.
The team started with scooping documents for the agreement and commitment of the
resources that will be placed in trial of implementation of the concept. After the scooping
document, Team start to look the process involved with in the services. They draw the process
consist of input, output, enabler and barriers.
There are some resistances during the implementation, but the implementation still
running. After two and half years of implementations, the results are showing great, but Maeve
Andrews suddenly announce that no further services would be moved to Central and that review
would be undertaken of the work so far. She hinted one possible outcome is the closure of
Cranleigh Central. Tony is furious with this action.
For cases discussion, we will discuss is the approach taken by Tony and the Team are lean
approach as they claimed? And from our standpoint why the project is in danger? And what could
Tony and his team have done differently or what is our recommendations? We will discuss it in
the next section.

Cases Discussion:
Are the approach Tony and team used are ‘lean approach’? From this cases we see, the
concept idea is to reduce the location and contact point, where before has many different access
points and different buildings with different opening times using different systems to simplified
centralized points with same systems, same opening times. This concept itself used a lean thinking
concept, where the idea concept is to eliminate or reduce non-value added process and increase
customer satisfaction.
Now let see Tony and the Team approach to internal to devised a plan for One-Stop-Shop
of Cranleigh Central. From the cases, we see what Tony and Team did first is to draw up the
scoping document. The main idea of scoping documents is to determines what is critical to the
services. Scoping documents later can be seen as a Project Charter, this project charter provides
critical information needed, like what customer needs (requirement) and the value of services
provided. After that, the team measure the requirement of resources for do the services, also who
should fill the places in. This information later transforms into process flow or services process by
Team to inform how the services being delivered to customers. This process is mapping the value
or later known is to make a Value Stream Mapping or VSM.
In the cases, shown that the Team, after make a process map, they analyze the existing
process documentation, check at the volumes and observe timings. They want to establish a system
flow within the information gain from process map and reassess the condition. This step known as
create a flow or establish a flow. From the flow, the Team tried to establish the pull system, pull
system means the services provided are driven from customers. Tony and Team tried to establish
the pull system by work with the directorates that keen and interested in one-stop-shop concept.
The model of this pull system is pull internal customers, where the directorates are the one directly
involved with the external customers, Tony and Teams, made the directorates as customer internal
who need the centralized system. So, if the directorates are agreed on work together for Cranleigh
Central, they will give the facilities they prepared.
Last is the implementation or seek perfection step, where should the Team evaluate what
their current condition and assess the measurement of process that need to be improved or
improvement in delivery services provided to gain customer satisfaction. From the cases is shown
that during their control or monitoring program at two years and to two and half years, there has
not been improvement action taken, this is shown that with the satisfying results, they are not ready
to do continuous improvement. The process of lean thinking or lean concept can be seen in figure
1 below this.
Based on our analytics and discussion, we can conclude that the approach taken from Tony
and Teams are indeed ‘lean approach’. There are five steps to implement or build the mindset of
leans, there are determine the value, map the stream values map, create a flow, build a pull system
and last are seek a perfection. Where seen the cases that Tony and teams managed to fulfill until
steps four, the build pull system and implementations of the services idea, but during the final
steps, seek a perfection, Tony and teams faces with some issues emerged that potentially put the
project in dangers.
 Figure 1. Diagram of Lean Thinking
Concept

As being discussed in previous section, there are several issues that emerges in the project
will put the project in dangers. First, during the scoping documents, the main objectives of teams
are to socialize the project and make all the directorates are agreed to the project and given the
commitment to the Team for their contribution on Cranleigh Central. But, as shown in the project
as time goes by, there are many resistance comes from directorates to the idea of project. This
resistance is creating a barrier inside the company to continuous with the improvement.
The resistance itself comes from employee who feel if the Cranleigh Central was
established and finished, they feel threatened, because with the Cranleigh Central, can put them
jobless because the limited staff needed in the Cranleigh Central and directorates. This issue is
what make the resistance happen and affecting the transfer services to Cranleigh Central.
Other issues are what Maeve Andrews announces during Two and half year period. The
issues are that the project will being closed and the services from directorates are being stopped to
move out to other places.
This issues are put the project in danger, because with the less commitment comes from
internal, means the internal is not ready to changes or did not wants to improve to be better, they
just want to stay in their comfort zones, Also the jobless issues make them did not want the projects
to happen, because if its happen, automatically the employees lose their jobs. The loose of their
job given the pressure to make sure the project never success or done.
Last issues are the closure statement by their Chief Executives, the closure statement can
indicate inconsistency within the Chief itself or she just playing around with team to make the
relationship between partner still intact. The hinted saying it will be closure can be happened by
decisions making of the Chief Executive to the current issues that will rise such as jobless issues
and cost saving issues. So how Tony and Team deal with the emerging issues?
During the implementation of the concept idea, Tony and Teams can have a different
approach to internal and directorates who involved within the project. Tony and Teams can
implement TQM or more soft approach to the resistances directorates. The lean approach already
a good approach, but the execution still had a flaw. In lean thinking concept, there are 5 steps of
lean implementations. The last steps, seek a perfection or indicated to continuous improvement,
this step is not seen in the cases, it means the Team still lack to implement the steps or the steps
are being contaminated by others. In this cases are the chief executives who suddenly state that
there are not any services being moved to Cranleigh Central afterwards and hinted the staff that
there will closure to project.
This policy indicates the team and internal still lack of commitment. In order to increase
the commitment, it can be applied by using TQM to makes the involvement of the staffs. TQM are
Total Quality Management, TQM are more to ensure the quality are still maintained all along the
process and the Total involvement of the staff to improvement. With the raise of involvement of
staff in planning or designing the new process in Cranleigh Central, they will feel more
commitment to the improvement, rather than they handed the steps to improvement itself.
The recommendations is still to applied the ‘lean approach’ on main system, but using the
TQM as tools to helps increase the involvement of staff to the new projects and raise their
commitment.