Government Reform savings as presented in this website comes as a result of several implementations. First Lean provides a vehicle for generating dollar savings and quality improvement over time through improvement of the processes used and or the service delivered. These savings deliver real value in reduced tax dollar expenditure and in better service to the public. It is difficult to determine just how much savings is going to be found or even when it’s going to be found but it is known that it can make a significant difference. The Japanese company Sony soon after WWII made cheap paper and plastic toys and sales in general of Japanese products in the US were thought to be junk. To counter this stigma Japanese industry developed Total Quality Management and now Lean and you see the results today in Sony, Honda and Toyota. While American automotive manufactures thought that TQM was some kind of gimmick the Japanese were gradually using quality to gain market share. Now all the automotive manufacturers are using Lean a new tool which is very effective in determining the best processes.

The second key area for savings is in Work Measurement where the work performed by each Function is measured and standards set. The result is the known number of hours required to do each Function which also determines the staffing required. I use a general rule of thumb to define “over staffing” as 10% of the work force in all areas where work measurement is not done. I have also found that this over staffing number may be significantly higher than 10%. One of the main reasons for this is that work assignments are usually made to individual employees regardless of the actual time required to do the job. This means that one employee may have a task that occupies 90% and another just 30% of his time. These inequalities show up during the process of Work Measurement. This problem goes away when a Lean Team is assigned these tasks because the Team has responsibility for finding the best way to get the task completed with no time lost.

The third area where staffing is reduced is during the final Government Reform process of changing from a Bureaucratic hierarchically structured organization to a Steering Managed and Functional Managed two level organization. In this process all middle managers become redundant eliminating the Bureaucratic hierarchical structure of government.

If you have thought carefully about what you have just read you may have already guessed that over-staffing may be very significant. I offer this experience: in my first two weeks working for the Management Consulting firm Alexander Proudfoot of Chicago. While doing Work Measurement at a client company in Michigan their management was blown away by the discovery that 60 employees out of 110 were found by me to be redundant. This was in the Production Control area when at that time most companies measured only their production lines but not other areas of the plant. See my articles 103,104,105 and 113.

The savings from over staffing is in addition to savings from combining and streamlining government through implementation of centralized Relational Data Bases. They can eliminate much government red tape in the management of agency interface with the public. See my articles 101, 102, 118, 120 and 123.

Supplement:
The following is the minimum expected savings from my recommendations for each state based on state payroll data from the US census bureau.

Alabama $90,900,000
Alaska 22,730,000
Arizona 117,060,000
Arkansas 48,080,000
California 950,690,000
Colorado 102,980,000
Connecticut 85,790,000
Delaware 19,940,000
Florida 328,260,000
Georgia 170,400,000
Hawaii 28,790,000
Idaho 25,770,000
Illinois 259,020,000
Indiana 112,260,000
Iowa 64,850,000
Kansas 60,030,000
Kentucky 73,780,000
Louisiana 81,200,000
Maine 25,240,000
Maryland 132,100,000
Massachusetts 146,030,000
Michigan 198,640,000
Minnesota 112,630,000
Mississippi 54,130,000
Missouri 101,220,000
Montana 17,760,000
Nebraska 38,330,000
Nevada 49,390,000
New Hampshire 25,220,000
New Jersey 250,760,000
New Mexico 41,420,000
New York 569,110,000
North Carolina 181,290,000
North Dakota 13,680,000
Ohio 229,060,000
Oklahoma 65,110,000
Oregon 73,620,000
Pennsylvania 227,170,000
Rhode Island 23,910,000
South Carolina 79,000,000
South Dakota 13,060,000
Tennessee 104,000,000
Texas 449,690,000
Utah 46,190,000
Vermont 14,240,000
Virginia 162,330,000
Washington 149,470,000
West Virginia 30,300,000
Wisconsin 108,420,000
Wyoming 16,500,000