STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Okay, welcome to the seminar. Thank you very much for joining. It's a pleasure to welcome Helen today. Let me start with introducing Helen. She has worked at FDFC for 12 years, initially as a scientist at Falls Space, working on early observation instrumentation.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Around 4 years ago, she moved into continuous improvement, first at Ralph Space, and then across a wider SDFC.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: She said her day-to-day work involves working with teams to understand how their work is currently done, helping to unearth where processes or activities
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Aren't currently working well, and encouraging teams to come up with measured solutions to save themselves time and effort and reduce frustration.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So, let's welcome Ellen.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Over to you. Thank you very much, for the introduction, Matt.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Just press play so I have a timer, and I don't care if it means, Jenny. Thank you very much for being short.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: That's really good, and thank you for having me along today. I'm going to talk about continuous improvement within SFC,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: I'm gonna give you a little bit, first, around what is continuous improvement, sort of history, some of the concepts around it, because it's not necessarily familiar to everybody. Such a bit on continuous improvement within SGFC, AI, and what you might see and hear, around the organization.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: But the most interesting thing, I hope, being is the case studies, so we've got lots of programs and initiatives going on in departments across the organization.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: what I wanted to do today was to introduce you to some of the people who've been leading those initiatives, across these departments, but also some of the tools they use, so that you've got a little example of some tools that you can take away to start continually improving the work that you do, as you need, and then finally, got a How You Can Get Involved section at the end as well.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So if I can ask in the room, I'm really sorry I'm off, I can't see you, so can I ask you in the room, does anyone have any experience in continuous improvement? Have you, heard anything about it before in the organization? So… Oh, yeah, I'm on the OTAC.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: travel improvement, continuous improvement project. But generally, I'm going to start at very, sort of, entry level then, if there's not too much experience of it within the group.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So what is continued improvement?
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: There are lots of, lovely stories and examples that you can use to describe what continuous improvement is, but this is one of the ones that we like to share the most. It's basically talking about having the right tools that are in the right state to do the job at the time that you want to do them.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So there's a couple of quotes around this, so the one frame blinking at the bottom, give me 6 hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first 4 sharpening the axe. It's about making sure you've got the right tools in place to do the job that you need to do at the time, but also taking time to have those tools.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: We must never become bitter. We must never become too busy sawing to take time to sharpen the saw.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So this is fundamentally what the concept of continuous improvement is. I wanted to go a little bit into the history, because it's quite a new thing within SGFC and UKRI, but it's been around for
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: more than a century now. So, continuous improvement started off with the Industrial Revolution. People started thinking, how can we get more out of these factories that we now have? F.w. Taylor in the 1900s fought in standardization, looking at aligning, what people are doing on the ground and organisational goals to make things a bit more effective.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: We've done some studies in the 1920s about how the human factors interact with that. It's not all just about the work, it's about how people interact with the work as well.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Moving forward through the 1940s and 50s, we're starting to get, lean, which is a word you might hear around, continuous improvement within manufacturing facilities and things like that. We're told to ignore this one.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And then in the 1980s, we've got the In6 Sigma as well, so starting to think about how we can reduce variation in class that we do and identify problems that way.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So today, we've got lots of these different theories that have developed over the past 100 years or so, and I'll introduce this a little bit more later on. So,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: First of all, I kind of wanted to ask you about, are any of these things familiar to you? When you come into work, does everything go really smoothly for you all of the time? Do you have frustrations? Might there be confusion? No one seems to know what's going on, or whose job it is to do the thing?
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: There might be some hassle. They're not always literal bios to put out, but there might be things that just need to be done really urgently right now.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: There might almost be a bit too much work within the system. You might start to see complaints that are obviously about here as well.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: everyone experiences these things in their day-to-day work. It's not unique to SGFC, it's not unique to UK crisis everywhere, and continuous improvement helps us to understand what the underlying problems are, and then allows us to look at fixing those things.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: small changes that we can all make to our day-to-day work can have a really big impact. So, we could all save ourselves 5 minutes every day off that task that's taken us an hour to do.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: across an organization of 3,000 people across the year, that's a huge amount of time that we can talk about. So even these really small things that we can do to improve that might seem insignificant to you at a time can actually make a really big difference if we're all going about it.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Continuous improvement is about fixing those things, so again, lots of lovely continuous improvement memes out there. Too busy for improvements? No, we're too busy. We'll keep our square wheels, thanks, we don't want your ramp.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Process improvement is key. So, all work is a process, and we struggle with that a little bit sometimes in this organization. So, every piece of work that you do has an input.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: multiple inputs, some activity that you do in the middle, and then some outputs as well. And that might be then part of a big process. Those outputs might be passing to somebody else.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So I've got some very simple examples of what processes are, so it might be managing emails, running a training course, like this one. I went through a process here, and we live it now. There will be a process that I follow up with at the end as well. Making coffee, doing recourse analysis reps, doing safety, things like that.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: In the culture of continuous improvement in an organization, what we're looking to do is to develop a shared understanding as a team of the current best way that we do that process, and then look to find a better way to do that. Understand what the problems are and what it is that we can do to incrementally improve that.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: The really key thing, though, is that it's that people who are doing the work know the work best, and therefore are the ones who are best placed
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: to solve those problems that you can't start, and they invite you to come in and say, here's your solution, we're going to solve your problems for you. What we can do is to provide training tools and access to Hudson so that you can think about how to solve your problems in the best way possible.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So I wanted to just call out, Brian has raised this already, the difference between continuous improvement initiatives and the big change projects and programs you can see. You can see this is a bit old, so we'll ignore those parts.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: But you've got your big change projects and programs that we're all aware of within the organization that come through, but in between those, we need to do some optimisation, how it is that we're working within those big new systems. So, our continuous improvement initiatives and projects
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: can be just about 5 minutes a day. Are we just spending a little bit of time thinking about how it is we do our work today, and is that a little bit better than we did it yesterday?
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: We need both of those to actually improve in the long term.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So now I'm going to go on to continuous improvement in STFC and UKRI.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So, in the workplace in general, we're trying to build a continuous improvement culture where it's okay to identify the fact that there are frustrations and problems in the workplace, and people speak up about them and talk about them and make them visible, because that's really important. We're not doing things perfectly in order.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: We want to see a culture where small improvements are happening often, but really importantly, we want to see decisions being made using data. So, one of the key things that we do to this improvement is we look at the situation as it is at the moment, we provide a measure or a baseline of what that is, we then make an improvement, and then we go back to that data later. We want to look at
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: what the difference is between the new situation and what it was before. Have we actually improved it? Can we put some data around that to say what it is that we've done and how effective?
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: How effective it's made.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: We want to see teams that are learning and able to adapt, communication is key, we work in silos quite a lot, so it's really key that we can share the learnings across STSE as well.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And that's something that we, do as a continuous improvement function. So, if you're doing an improvement, you might hear us come up and say, oh, this team over here has done something similar. I can talk to them about their experiences.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And there's also a culture where everyone's involved. It's not just something that people are grown to do, it's not just something senior leadership should be built throughout the organization.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: We work in a scientific organization, right? We're already doing continuous improvement in our day-to-day work that we do. We're experimenting, we're iterating, and we're learning from what's gone before us in science, engineering, and in technology that we're doing.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: The opportunity with continuous improvement is to apply that similar mindset, not just to what we do and what our outputs are, but to how we go about doing it, that's why.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: You will see throughout this that I have borrowed, so not duplicating that, but a lot of slides from the PRI Continues Improvement team, this is one of them.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: they'll be peppered through, you'll see them, they'll have links to the CI sites and things, so when you can access the slides on the go, you'll have all the links to the CI sites and materials and information you can get.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So, across UKRI,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Slightly older now, we're having a new strategy coming out, so… but this is sort of the current statement of the 22-27 strategy. We're looking at a culture mindset way of working with small incremental changes to the products we create, services we provide, and to our internal processes as well.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: To make us more effective.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: To do that, we need an empowered workforce, which is creative, inclusive, collaborative, and courageous.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And I wanted to talk a bit about this one in more detail, because this is really important. The culture, the mindset, and the way of working within that strategy are all completely dependent on one another.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: At an organisational level, we need a culture where continuous improvement is the way we go about doing things. We're always improving or striving to do the work that we do a little bit better.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: At an individual level, so for each of us individually, we've also got that mindset as well, and then a way of working, we're building in those tools. But without having those tools, we can't get that mindset, but having that mindset, we can't have that culture, and vice versa as well. So it's really important that we're…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: We use a continuous improvement team, providing everyone within the organization with the tools and the coaching and support that they need to be able to
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: I love this culture.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So with NSTFC Continuous Improvement, our ambition is to inspire and encourage more people across the organization to improve the status quo, to make work better for them.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: This is our, kind of, visual strategy, I suppose. We've got three strands of work that we do, all underpinned by common syndic engagement, what we're doing today.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Developing continuous improvement capability, we can provide training and coaching.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: technology, so I'll get more to it later on.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: We encourage teams, and we work directly with teams to scope and tackle improvements, making sure the right people are in the room, and making sure we're reducing that duplication effort that I talked about earlier.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And we're also letting an improvement culture by celebrating the successes that people have, when they're making improvements to their system.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And we're working to make sure that continuous improvement is very encouraged by the leadership of all levels within the organization as well.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: A little bit stronger than we care on. Continuous improvement strategy is about looking for what it is that we do. So, looking at our policies, our processes, our standard operating procedures, and understanding what the current state is.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: We want to understand that, so we want to underpin that with data, so we understand what it is we're doing.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: how do we understand how well we're doing that at the moment? So, there's lots of continuous improvement tools that you can use to help you understand how the work that you're doing is performing at the moment.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And then, once you've figured out how you're performing at the moment, and what areas it might need, what areas might need to be improved, you can do your targeted continuous improvement activities. So that's when you might do, something
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: like, a training course or something like that to give you the skills that you need to recruit that local area. And I'll get on to the different levels of intervention and things that we've got later on in the talk as well.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: All of these sections are underpinned by really good knowledge and resources, so say the IT have a lot of that available for all of the councils that we use for a lot of their materials, and they've also got a continuous improvement network where you can come together with like-minded people who wish to, improve the way that they're going about doing their work within that network.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: That's fine.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So, come back to this flower giant gram.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: A bit later fun. Which one of these is right? So, we looked through, maybe screening, community improvement, all these different theories and names that you might get married around.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Oh, it's how she behaves.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Within UKOI, and therefore within us, seeing when we use a festive breed blend. We pick the most relevant tools and techniques for the size and shape and style of problem it is that we're encountering in what we do.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: There's lots of information about these things available on the CI site, let's be honest, so I would encourage you to reach out to one of the continuing, because he could not talk you through your standard problem and see what it is that you could apply for.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: But there are key principles which underpin all the most of CPA research far more about
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: How would you go about donating to this initiative?
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: One of the key ones is…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Pull it focused on the customer? This language comes from external to, S2C, but it's who's the end user of whatever process it is going to be doing. Really important that you're delivering what they need at the time that they needed in the best way possible for that.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So, looking at identifying and understanding how the work gets done, mapping out the process, how does that process work.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: This one's really important, so looking at, are there parts of that process that aren't actually delivering anything to the end user of whatever it is we're doing?
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: can we get rid of those from our process, or do we need them for compliance, for example, and we need to keep them in there, but we're identifying that they're not necessarily creating that value for the customer. So it's having a look at those things with that data lens, and saying, what is it that we need within this process, or is there anything…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: We're looking at data, managing by fact, recent variation. It's really important that you have just
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Go away and say, well, I can see this problem with this, and I'm going to improve that is what you may see as a problem there may have a few of downstream effects, depending on your process. It's really important to get everyone involved who's involved in the process.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And then we're looking at undertaking improvement activity in systematic ways. That's going back to these theories that we were saying. There are ways that have been proven throughout the past 100 years in lots of different workplaces where you can tackle problems using these techniques. So, we're using those systematic ways in which terms.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And across SDFC today, we've had a lot of success by deploying these methods. So, we've had, more than 600 people across SDFC being trained to Continuous Improvement Basics, which is a free-to-access course available through the UKI team.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: We've also had an additional 100 people who've done,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: what we call practitioner training, so this is, and I'll get onto the training later on. But all of the things that we're talking about here are things that have been done in departments by practitioners who have, been working toward obligation by delivering their infrequent initiative.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So you can see that we've got a bread here. This isn't continuous improvement programs. A lot of, different departments have been involved to different extents as well. So some departments have put cohorts through,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: the training program in order to deliver a series of, improvements that they've come up with at a strategic level. And in some departments, we have people doing this sort of, independently, so we've got ones and twos within departments, just looking at specific processes that they want to improve as part of their day-to-day work.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So I can pick out some of the cohorts, so we've had, the States, and ISIS, and Scientific Computing, and also Old Be Mine, where they had, the UK RIT go and visit to deliver the training.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Back in November last year. Robin really enjoys seeing some of the continued… a lot of the visual management that they have in place at Bolby, which is a key part to this improvement as well.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: In some of the other places, we've had, so UKATC have been doing a lot of work recently, looking at their key business processes and introducing, policy management systems, so looking at goods in, non-conformances, goods out. And they've recently, the last month, done
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: a large, 5S activity. I'll get into what 5S is later as well.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: But what I really wanted to show on this slide is just the breadth of activity that's going on across SGFC, and the reach that we've had, and some of the benefits that have been delivered as well.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Oh, there we go, sorry.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So, the most interesting thing for me, though, is really learning about what the tangible improvements are that people are doing across the weekly sessions. So, I wanted to present three case studies to you, where I'm going to introduce the case study, introduce one of the tools that the practitioner used during that,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: used during that improvement to help to get them along the way, and then sort of talk about what the results are as well. And what I'm hoping is that this gives you these three tools, that you can take away and start using in my day-to-day workflesh.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So, the first case study that I want to talk about, comes from the Country center.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Suck.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And this… This agreement was, done by Vidicraft, who works in the Portfolio Management center.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And they identified that they had a problem when they were doing two projects. So it was taking anywhere from 2 days to 8 weeks, for the project managers to identify whether they had suitable resource available.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: on, to work on the new projects that were coming in. I felt that the decision-making was subjective, and it was data-driven.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And you can see here.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: But what they decided to do was have a look across a number of projects, so they had new projects come into the portfolio, and they were looking across those projects to say, how long does that actually take these to do this? So you can see the average of 4 weeks, but anything up to any doubt.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So, the tool that they used to identify what a brute cause was, in this case, was shown diagram, you know, seeing them all come across it. What this tool allows you to do is to have a look at whatever causes you think may be, contributing to that issue.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And it takes you through it in a systematic way. So you're talking about things that may be contributing to the issue, like policy processes. Is there a problem with that? Is it being applied properly?
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: What can we understand from there? And if you talk about data and information, do we have the right data in place at the right time to be able to do this? You talk about systems, technology, and equipment.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So, do we have the right tools available to us at the right time to be able to carry out the process that we need to? And we could also talk about people and behaviour, and so that's talking about things like, do we have the right training in place to support people, to the students?
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So you can group those problem causes into categories to make sure that you don't miss anything, you do this as a team, so it's not just one person's view of what that problem might be, or learning from all of the different stakeholders within that process.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And it just helps you to get to… it helps you to unearth all of the possible causes of a problem, but you then start to see, oh, maybe we've got something down here in the data information that's maybe underpinning of those other causes, and that's where we start to identify the multiple root causes, I think.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So in the year, the team did this, they decided to put in place a transparent view of skills across the participating teams. So they ran this as a demonstration within a small group, and they developed that view of the skills across that team, which support the internal skills edits.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: They then developed a standard operating procedure, so the project managers took that internal SMS database, identified staff who had the skills to be able to do the work that's coming in, and also looked at the staff application system at the same time.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: They were able to confirm those resource plans that they came up with the group and team leads, and also with the individual staff as well, so the process became an awful lot more transparent.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So overall, the average processing time for resourcing reduced from an average of 4 weeks down to 2 days.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And the effort that the project managers were having to put into that process, which previously had involved an awful lot of email back and forth.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Reduced from 2 days per project to around 1 hour.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: In addition, staff were able to see that the, internal skills database was made open, so staff could see what staff, what skills other staff had.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And you could also then use that database to do things like skills gap analysis and personalized training and things like that as well. So there were lots of different benefits that resulted from this project, but just looking at, initially, reducing the time between that process.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So, number 2.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: This one comes from Aztec. So, IO's the NFL practitioner in this case. Io presented, actually, at our Continuous Improvement Celebration event last November, and, I've got a link to the recording in the slides, so rather than me doing a really bad job of explaining IO's project to you, you can take my summary and then go and learn more about it directly from IOS.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So the cryogenic inventory storage system wasn't sufficient. It's taking as long as two to three hours weekly for people to find components for their regular tasks, not even the one-off tasks they needed to do. This was for the regular workforce.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So, they decided to, so they took some images of their before as part of their measure phase of their continuous improvement. They also used a survey, so when people started to compete for things within the lab that they needed to do the work that they needed to do.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: They measured the current time that it's taken to find components, and decided to apply a method called 5S, which is another of our continuous improvement tools.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: 5S is used to establish a really well-organised physical or digital working environment. It removes waste, and can improve productivity, and also help with well-being as well for staff.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: We've got some images here on the right-hand side of the things that you may see. So, anyone's desktop that looks like this appeal to this in the past.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: This is an image of the Lezzanine rail space before they did a similar activity there. And what this system allows you to do is to get to a workspace where you turn up every day and everything is where you expect it to be.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And there is a defined process, so hopefully you can use that workspace as well, because it is still defined in the right places for you to…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Be able to just turn up and do the job that you need to do.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So, the 5S is, it's an incredibly bad translation from Japanese, but this is the English translation of what they've used. So what you do is, first of all, you sort your needed items from your unneeded items, and then you organize everything that remains into a system that's easy to work with. And the important thing here is
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: into a system that's easy to put. A lot of the time, we get feedback and say, well, just had a tidy up, haven't they?
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: The important thing about it is actually having that system that allows you to sustain that as well, sustain that new working environment, but also then to continually improve on that too.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: It's important to clean up and make that a part of what it is that you're going about doing every day, and you schedule them activities in the future, so that you can do your sort and your setting order on a regular basis.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: A really important part of this is,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: leadership support for this as well. You might have heard the phrase, gobog walks, which is something that can come up in the literature quite frequently, and that's where leadership can walk around the shop floor, find out what's actually going on in the working areas, and help to unlock problems, and have you thought about maybe
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: changing the position with that, so that it's not walking so far, that type of thing. You can just get that fresh view on it as well, so getting that input is really important. And then finally, sustain it, keep following those steps 1 to 4,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Throughout time, so that you can sustain that best way of working, but also look for ways to improve it going forward as well.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So, going back to the lab in, dead spring.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So, by focusing on the users, the people who actually went there to collect the bits and pieces that they needed to deal with, a system was defined so that they could better order and locate components in their storage area. So, they defined two different storage areas then.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: They had one for the things that we need every day to do the jobs that we need to do, and then you've got one for long-term storage as well. One of the key things that they chose to do was to use some clear boxes that they had around memory anyway, so that you can just see what's there. It's really easy to see what's there.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: This team, it sounds like a really small thing, right? This team estimated that the amount of time that they saved, not certain opponents, actually came to around 28,000 a year.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And not spending that time doing that, and they can redeploy that time of doing the work that they actually came to our space to do. Also, really reduce the frustration that they had, and I spoke a bit about traveling those shorter distances to find those relevant
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: As I said.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: I've done a really bad job, probably, explaining what they went through, the process there. I did a really good tool for Continuity Improvement Celebration, which is available on the source, so you can look at that, and I've got the timestamp in there for you as well, if you want to have a look at that later.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Moving on, so finally, case study number 3. I want to talk about processes, making a process clearer or faster.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So this pro… this was a problem that was identified within the ISIS target services area. They look after solid proof of waste, particularly radioactive waste as well.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: They introduced a new radioactive waste portal whereby, in order to be able to recycle more of their waste, they needed additional information about one of the items that were coming into the service area.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: But for one specific type of waste, which is generated frequently, cleaner environments, soft waste, so your gloves and new coats and all of those types of things.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: They will be bagged up, and then 30 of those bags will be impacted into a drum.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: But the labeling was happening for each of those individual bags, and then the dose count was actually only valid on the grommets.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So what that team did was map the process, and they made sure that they map the process with all of the different teams they've got. So this isn't just the health physics team want to
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: James Sips, so she's the person who led the improvement, but it was also with the waste teams as well, so looking at all of the different steps in that process, and who interacts with it, so they can build a full picture of all of the things they're doing.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So you can see here the process as it was, and they identified a couple of things when the maps processed. So, at these points where the stars happen.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: all of the previous steps in the process are made annulled by the fact that you're then carrying out this step. So they identified an awful lot of points within that process that they were able to identify and get rid of.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So, the final tool I wanted to introduce for you today is TimWoods. This is another slide, again, from UKRI training materials, but it goes through lots of really nice examples that you might come across in your day-to-day work as well. So, you can, identify waste in
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Lots of different ways, and so you've got a couple which are about movement, so you've got motion and transport, so that's movement that's stuck.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Movement of people as well. Some really nice things that you can do while people are moving around sites to determine whether the instruments that it is using are in quite the right order for the project work that they're doing, for example. We've seen that in the technology department as well.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: There's things around, numbers of files that might be waiting for you to do things, waiting for approvals and signatures. We spend quite a lot of time waiting for other people to do bits, so that we can carry on with our work as well.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: There might be overproduction, creating more things than necessary, making extra copies, for example, lots of people onto the trains, processing more than is necessary, obtaining lots and lots of signatures and approvals when maybe one would have done, re-entering data manually.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Using lots of different applications, same information, I think we're probably guilty of that process, too soon.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: There are a couple of others, so defects, this is where things are just going wrong. So, that's a waste, because you've added deleting whatever thing you're doing, or doing the process step that you're doing, and it's just not meeting the door.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: containing hours, so you can do things there to try and improve that. And then under or over-utilizing, people as well. So, do people have the right skills to do it? Do we have
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: People who aren't trained to do the job? Do we have very highly skilled people doing things that I shouldn't necessarily, be doing?
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So, there's lots of different ways that you can identify. What Jane did was to go through that process step by step, and she's got really good examples of visual attention. So, what she did was she went round and she took a picture of each of those steps of the process.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So, from collecting the waste in the cages, all the way through to having it end the drums that they needed at the end. And you can see here that she's used some visual management processes, and that's just identifying which of these steps don't happen. So, by using this Tim Woods example, they were able to go through and say, we don't need to do these steps of this process anymore.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So the new process that they had here,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: It's, lot fewer steps than the one that we showed previously, and by working with those teams, they've made sure that everyone's still getting all of the information that they need at the point in the process that they need it, that they're just following a much more simplified process.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So you can find out more about Jane's work by looking at the posters about the continuous improvement from last year as well, and James just had an article in, the brief recently as well, at the start of April, where she talks about the improvement and the impact it's had on teams as well.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So I mentioned with Jane's work about visual management tools, I just wanted to put those in a little bit more detail. It's another key part of continuous improvement, and some of the things that you might see around.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Dashboards can be really useful, so this is looking at the data, and what you can use the dashboards is what's actually changing for us. You don't necessarily need to be looking at the raw data, you need to look at, well, how are we compared to last month? How are we compared to last year? Are we moving in the right direction?
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: you can look at exceptions as well. Vision processes, as I said, Jamie's a really good example of that, just saying these are the steps that we do not need in our process, so we can have a look at how we deal with those. The process mapping is really important, and it really unearths for where you're working in meetings, I guess, like the, OTAC project, the process there.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Mapping the process out reveals an awful lot of things that you wouldn't necessarily know if your activity in the process is at the beginning. There's an awful lot of other things that happen within that process that are not necessary.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: The other thing that you can do is work things like Kanban boards, and that can allow you to make work visible. So it allows you to see what it is your team is working on.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: It allows you to see what the different priorities of the team are. It allows you, if you've come to a point where you're waiting, maybe, things to happen, you can put some of the work through that's important to your team. Might not have been your top priority, but you can pump other people on the team to get that done as well.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And there are lots of freely available apps that you can use to do that quite different as well.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So finally, I wanted to finish up with how you can get involved in this improvement. As you say, we're aiming to embed this improving culture across the organization. We want everyone to be thinking about, how can I improve
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: what I'm doing by 5 minutes every day, so that I can see that cumulative impact of that over the course of
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: My own work in the air, but across the department, the organization.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: One of the things that we do to share the good news about previous improvements is to host the Inter Sprick and Celebration event. This happens in October or November every year. It's,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: in person, generally, at Rerald and at Daresbury, and I've got a bit of tragedy as well, so please do come along to that this year to find out about the improvements you'll be making to all sorts of different processes and work areas across the organization.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: as I say, I've barely been able to scratch the surface today in terms of the number of things that people have done.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Do you feel like I've stopped.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: One of the things that we're really pleased to be seeing is that not only are people kind of doing this and going through the training and getting that benefit for themselves personally, but then we're seeing those people adapt the way that they know about doing their work as well. So we've seen lots of pop-up improvements across the organization where they're saying, oh.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: I went and I learned a bit about this tool, maybe in the CI network, or perhaps in a training session, and they've gone and they've applied their tool into the RFS, and you'll see the benefits of that.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: What do we want to get to? So I'll come back again to the slide that we had at the start, speaking about the problems or improvements that are just happening.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: decisions are being made with that underlying data that's actually… how can we see whether it's improvement or not, and how much of an improvement it's been, and the evidence involved. We know we're all already applying these principles in the work of science that we do.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: You can have a look at the other things that underpin the work that we do, our processes, like our meetings, our workspaces, and how it is we actually go about doing the job that we do.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: That's what we wanted. We wanted to be applying these techniques to make the work that we do that bit more…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So how can you contribute to continuous improvement within SJC and KY? Get involved, and talk to us. Look for opportunities within your day-to-day work. Something like Tim Woods has piqued your interest today, and you've seen something on there that says, oh, yeah, I get a lot of duplicate emails, maybe we could do something about that.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Have a think about it, talk to people about it, give it a try, see if there's something that you can do to improve your day-to-day that might help to impact other people in a positive way as well.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Maintain that positive and open attitude to continue some improvement, maybe promote
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: continuous improvement via colleagues, mobile training within your teams. Ukrics is currently on a…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: on a bit of a break while they're redoing all of their, training materials, but we have access to that stuff, so if you wanted to do, scoping sessions within Teams, that's something you could talk to me about as well. We can get that going for you in the shorter term.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Make use of the resources that are available to you, and just get involved. Start or get involved in some of the initiatives and projects.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: This is my main improvement. I came to a slow today, I didn't quite have time to finish it off. It's very busy, I don't like it very much, and I will change it, but I'll only support offer. I talked a bit earlier on about how it's really important to have the right tool for the right job.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: There are lots of different complexities and scopes of problems that you can have.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: From knowing what the root cause is, and knowing what the solution should be. Just get on and do it. There's support that you can use, there's different reporting mechanisms that you can use, just to make sure you've got that check and balance in there.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Let's just go ahead and do it. You can get more information about the types of things that you can use for low-touch,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: low-touch, information gathering on the UK OCR side.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And that goes all the way through, so you might…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: not knowing what the root cause of your problem is might not be something that turns up too often, but it's turning up frequently enough to be an annoyance or a frustration. You can use things like structured problem solving. We've got training available, sort of one-day training courses for people to use these types of techniques, and this is used
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: It could be used in, sort of, incident investigation safety things, it can be used in, trying to understand lessons learned from projects and things like that. These are the types of tools you might use for that. They're a little bit more light touch. And then you've got the gold standard, which is to lead Six Sigma, where you don't know what your root causes are.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And they're having quite high impact on the business. So, this is our training mechanism that people do a couple of days for a yellow belt, or up to 5 days for a green bell, and that's really looking into how you can understand business processes and what it is you need to do to
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So as I say, we've got specific support available across all of these three things. I really recommend you for writing to News Improvement Basics training. It's a half a day. You get so many more tools than I have time to do.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And it just gives you that little bit of grounding in how to go about doing these types of improvements as well.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: We've got a separate offer as well. We've got an additional offer, so things that can support all types of improvement activities.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: We've got access to Agile coaches, so we can start to work dependencies and different types of ways of working teams. We've got access to facilitation lead and change training, if that's something that's of interest to you, if you're going into slightly bigger pieces of work that require that type of thing.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And the STFCCI team can also help you with benefits identification and support as well, following the meeting STFC.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Fundamentally, just come past this. We want to get involved in continuous improvement.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Who is wrong.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: This slide reiterates everything I just said, because this is the EcoRite one. The only differences here are they post all the materials and things I spoke about today. It's not too much for duplicating them. So you can access the eco-right user site and their choice of templates library.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Just gives you a bit more information on how to use things like options today. They also have their continuous improvement networks, that means once every three months, you don't need to have any experience in continuous improvement, just an interest in
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: trying to make you work better, actually. And that network shares knowledge and skills and experience, and learns for each other.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: I'd ask a few before we leave today, so we've got support on the budget to train, coach your teams and individuals to make improvements in the local area. It's really fundamentally not about us having to do improvement to you, it's about providing the support so that you can figure out what the best way is to improve your own processes.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: It's tailored to your work, so it sounds like in addition to us, we've got some training that will take time for us, but what you get back from that upfront investment in time in training people is
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: People who are equipped to be able to see things that need to be improved and improved from day on day, and it's making the work more effective, reducing frustration, not just for those individuals, but for what entities as well.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And it should improve the look.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Let's see what that lists.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So I've got a few final questions and challenges. As you lead today, consider these things, what frustrations do we have?
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: What problems do we have that we might have fixed? Maybe more than once, but that keep coming back.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And might these types of things benefit from using some of these tools and techniques, though?
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: How can you get involved?
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So, that's the end of my presentation session. I just wanted to introduce Kieran soft, so he… Kieran and I job share. I think we both do this for about half our time each.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So Kieran works at the Daysbury Lab. We have split the departments roughly by site, but we also work with the other sites as well. So, and we have shared mailbox. You may hear from Kieran rather than me.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: If you used to see I've been out drastic.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: But otherwise, I think I've spoken too fast. Thank you very much for your attention, and I'm happy to see if anybody wants to be yours.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Thank you, that was a very clear presentation. Any questions?
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Yes. Thank you for the lovely talk. I think in one sense, I hope this huge preaching is quiet here, because, I mean, we're all part of this, as most of us, and our process, and we are continuously upgrading our tech, we're continuously improving things. We don't call it that, but, I mean, like.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And we're also the tool developers of bespoke thing, so we're always, I mean, right now I'm upgrading various systems, we see these things, so I'm not sure. In some sense.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Kind of already…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: doing this, so I'm not sure how things… most of our… most of my personal frustrations, things that confused, they're actually not an experiment, because again, we work in a very large, community of, like, 3,000, 5,000 people, things, and they're…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: it's dealing with STFC, it's where things don't continuously improve, I think, like, fusion, things like that. So, in one sense, our problems here are the ones in which our STSC policies really seem to make our lives more difficult.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So, I'm not sure how… just… it's more of a… yeah, it's more of a comment. I'm not sure how to take away from this, because I feel we're already doing this, but I'm not sure how we can…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: change SCSE policies by fusion of different, which is the problem. Yeah, so I'd agree. So, I pitched this with that scientific method up front, because I know that an awful lot of us are thinking in that way about what it is that it is.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: All we can do from that side is to beat through the frustrations they're coming out.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: The more that we can do that and work with teams that are being exposed to have this.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: that's more better to help all of us, but I don't think we can all necessarily say that everything that we do locally as a team is necessary. It is best either, so it's just having an open mind to, why could we improve? What could we do better? And we do our bit better.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And fix our piece of the puzzle, so that… and if everybody then is thinking about how they can fix their piece of the puzzle, overall, it's not necessarily moving forward.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: No, I absolutely agree. I think we all agree, I think this is our mindset, we're all driven through the things and research rather than born, like I said, so I think we all agree it's just how people interact.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: I think I agree, I think that this is a very important thing, for SDFC.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: But I remember when I tried to engage with this when it first started, I think… I can't remember her first name, is it Jane Price?
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So I put forward lots of proposals.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Had a good conversation with Jane.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And they were all ignored, and the fundamental problem was, A, there were no quick wins, that was the word that was used.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And secondly, there was an STSC refusal, almost.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: To invest now in order to save money later.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And so those frustrations were, from 5 years ago, are still here.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And nothing has been addressed. I don't know if you feel that that has changed in any way, or if there's a way we can change that attitude.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: there's an opportunity, I think, at the moment, within the environment that we're sitting in, to be able to make some of those frustrations better heard. We do have…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: I wouldn't be sitting here if we weren't funded. We didn't have a budget from DB to provide this training coaching, but it's very much a moment, how can we…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Spread…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Word, and get everyone within the organization thinking about how they can improve their own day-to-day, as well as these big things that need to be fixed as well.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: we can fix at STFC level, it can be different as well, because there's also the constraints that come work within EKRI and government, and all of the different players that are on that, too. So, it's figuring out where we can best use the effort, the people that we have within the organization, within our control.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: How could we…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And, get support from wider across the organization, which is part of our help as well, as to what these key person really are and what a group of people are.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Yeah, I think that point you just made, it's not our processes, I think, with MPPD that solve the main problem, it's using someone else's. And I feel that when you go to them and say, there's a problem with your process, the response is, you know.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: a bit negative. They won't accept that. Even if you offer to help, it seems like, how dare you say, our process isn't perfect, and I haven't really felt that that has changed in some places. Some places, I'm sure some are very good, but…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Yeah, so part of the challenge in what I do, part of what my day-to-day is, is going out shopping.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So, these are processes that are…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: not helping people, what can we do together to make that better? But also, how can we make sure we're not improving those in isolation, and we're getting that feedback from people who are users of those discussions to try to make them better going forward.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Any other questions on Zoom?
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Can you ask about the training, just the variety of training that you mentioned on your slide?
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So, I'm wondering whether that's tailored to the specific group.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And, that's not part of the… compulsory training.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: how we navigate that? Yeah, of course, as I say, dreadful stuff. Continuous improvement basics of reading, so stays currently on hold. They are developing… UKRI developed a new suite of,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: We spoke to UKI and councils, community, so that's going through all of the levels from the basics through the yellow belt and the rebel.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: They recently launched the other bug, so they have their own program where they're looking to prove that process improvement is something the CRM should be doing, so they're doing their, sort of.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: first year or so of course, going through that, the processes that can be approved further.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: The basics training.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: generally can be accessed through Oracle Fusion, through the training booking system. At the moment, it's available through a formal source, so you can either go there directly, there is a link to that within the slide deck, or just come to us, we're building a white list for it, so that we can get CC stuff through it as they need it.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: The yellow belt and the green belt, we also hold a waitlist for those, so as we have people come to us from different departments across the organization saying that there are processes that they want to improve, we hold a waitlist for those, so, they're running at the moment once every 3 to 4 months or so, so again, you come to us as a team.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And we can help advise you on point as you need to, work that you want to do. The really important thing for us is that
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: people get the right tools to improve the thing they want to improve. There's absolutely no point in going to this gold standard training if all you need is a quick fish phone or to have a look through to work, and that's gonna solve the problem that you want to solve.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So, do come and talk to us about whatever it is that you want to have a look at. We're happy to have a chat with you about what might be the best expense.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So it's the basic training and online
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: thing, or is it a tutor-led course? It's, half a day, and it's available on Teams, or we can get the, directly now to come across to us, so we can get, if you want to do Teams for that, if you want to… sorry, teams of Teams. If you want to train an entire local team, we can get somebody in a room for you, or you can attend the open courses, which is just available for our day.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And those trainings, how they use,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: If it's from Euclide or SDFC, or are there some external…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: The basics is offered by the KRI team, during this year's phase, where they're doing their, demonstration of building the capability within the UKRI team. They're using external contractors for the LL approval, but…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Should that program be successful, they will bring that in-house.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: We'll have all the… capability, for the, police, sick care, training, and coaching.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: I'm not leaving me.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: as far as I'm aware, really charge to people who want to know, but as you say, it's not part of the material, so it's something…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: When we say come to us to have a conversation about it, we want to make sure we're getting the right training, but we also want to make sure that whatever processes you're looking to improve is supported by the business. So we'll be asking for, a sponsor for that piece of work as part.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So that's somebody within the business who maybe owns the process, or,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: If it's a small process, then it might be your line manager who's supporting you through that, just to give you that extra level of support. And for these ones up here, there is time involved in improving processes, so this would be the support that the business wants you to do this, the success, like, time to do that sort of stuff.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: 13 years in the SDG, our processes seem to improve rapidly as the outside world changes.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Any questions? Yeah, I think that was a very good overview, so now we are informed, we know that you exist.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And, it seems like it's a two-way process, so maybe we could be the initiators by identifying our day-to-day
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Some more general problems, and getting in a more, maybe, informal first, contact with you, and…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: That would be fabulous step, as I say.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: we're not best placed to know your processes, right? We don't know how it is to work, so we can provide support with all of these things, but unless we know what we're doing…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Yeah, I think these examples were very helpful, and they were all specific goal, and it broke.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Exactly.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And I think, if needed, you could also point us to the trainings. Yeah, of course. So, when you get the PDF, Indico? Yeah. Yeah, so the PDF on IndieCo has all of the… all the links, so…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Should be, like, Chinese one.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So, that should all be there, and yeah, the links to training. So we've got pages on the source that describe each of the modules and give you a rundown. We'll probably take this on to the trainings as well, so you can find that on, the improvements to see in that section.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: But you mentioned Kieran and yourself. Who else are there? Oh, so, there's Kieran and myself within STSC, and then the UKI team, there's 3 of them. So there's, Robin Lang.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: As the head of continuous improvement in the PRI, and she has two continuous improvement needs as well, who provides, coaching, and student training, as their full front of me, so…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: all people that you may come across, but, yeah, we can, at the moment, we're working really closely with them to make sure that the training that they offer is appropriate for SJOC staff as well.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So not just, process-driven, not just the, sort of, the type of work that UCRI does, but also the lab expert, the engineering stuff that happens within SCHC as well.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And so we got really good links with them.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And we're able to get access to the training piece that I haven't been using.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Thank you.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Putting on Zoom?
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: I don't see other experience on Zoom, but we can continue over the lunch, so…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Please join us if you would have some other questions, and let's close to San Latri. Thank you very much for joining me.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Very much for having me.