Implementation of lean in educational institutions

Lean philosophy is proven to be a success in manufacturing environment, where organizations are driven to provide more value to the customers with fewer resources. With the significant success that Lean has achieved, non-manufacturing settings such as service industry and healthcare industry have also been greatly benefited from Lean implementation. Yet one industry which is suffering a lot in terms of service efficiency and failure to adapt to changing customer's demands is Educational Institutions (EI), has largely escaped the radar of lean. The dearth of quality literature can be the hindrance for institutions trying to implement lean initiatives. The purpose of this thesis work is to examine the Lean implementation in EI. This thesis looks at major processes in an educational institution and classifies them into clusters of processes depending on the nature of the process. These clusters of processes are identified as paper and electronic based processes, teaching processes and physical processes. This thesis dwells into each of these clusters by understanding how the processes are performed and the problems confronted with each of these processes. After which a concerted effort is made in proposing the lean tools needed to make those processes Lean, i.e., efficient and effective. The research presents a unique and holistic way of implementing lean in all the processes of educational institution rather than trying to deal with each process separately as random improvement initiatives (or Rapid Improvement Efforts), which are difficult to sustain over a long period of time.