“Lean is a way to do more with less -- less human effort, less equipment, less time and less space -- while coming closer to providing exactly what the customers want.” This definition by J.P. Womack, a founding father of lean, eloquently captures not only the promise, but also the reality, of lean. 

Participants will leave with easy-to-use reference materials and a working understanding of how to map, analyze and speed up processes (think adding items from vendors to your collection, checking in and shelving materials, program scheduling and more) in your organization. The result? Staff freed up to do other important tasks and customers delighted!

Jane Martel has managed many successful process improvement projects and can attest to the merits of using Lean in libraries. She's led successful project teams that drastically improved customer satisfaction and reduced time and errors. The processes that were improved included adding gift donations to the collection, courier deliveries to libraries, paging to fulfill holds, processing patron requests for titles, and more. The results speak for themselves: 

• Item check in and shelving: from > 7 days to 1.5 hours 
• Scheduling of 6,000 programs annually: 95% reduction in time spent by Programming Department staff to resolve schedule problems, from 64 hours to 3 hours 
• Processing new titles received from vendors: from 55 days to 5 days and a 235% increase in the percent of carts processed within two weeks 
• On-time delivery of storytime resource packs: from 9% to 91%

About Jane Martel: With a lifetime of professional experience in business, government and non-profit organizations, Jane Martel has found her sweet spot, settling into public libraries for the long haul. She has worked for Arapahoe Libraries since 2008. As Senior Project Manager, Jane manages the project management app, coaches project managers, serves on the Data Strategy Team, and manages strategic cross-functional projects, especially those focusing on process improvement. Jane is happiest when working with teams to revamp library processes to function more efficiently and effectively. For more information on her work history, see https://www.linkedin.com/in/janemartel/.