Quality for cities - quality management

Nation's Business, Oct, 1991 by Joseph Sensenbrenner

As municipal governments struggle with recession-induced revenue losses, small businesses face the prospect of higher local taxes or reduced services.

Strapped communities can't turn for help to federal or state governments, which are struggling with serious financial problems of their own.

Communities are not limited, however, to choosing more taxes or less service. They can find the help they need in the recent hard-won lessons of American industry.

In the 1970s and '80s, fierce competition from Japan and other nations inspired many U.S. businesses to examine Japanese methods and re-evaluate their own production techniques.

Japanese companies succeeded using techniques of quality improvement and statistical control pioneered by industrial consultant and statiscian W. Edwards Deming, the American who transformed "Made in Japan" from a label for inferior products into a badge of quality.

The essentials of Deming's total-quality management are common sense: Seek to perfect the system rather then the individual. Focus on the needs of the customer. Use teamwork, and break down departmental barriers. Involve more of the work force in solving problems using relevant data. Drive ourt fear, and encourage a proud sense of ownership of one's job.

Deming's approach can be applied to the largest, most complex service industry in the U.S.--local government.

The same powerful techniques that Ford and Westinghouse used to make better cars and electric-generating equipment can be used by local governments to provide better police protection, street maintenance, and health services, often at lower cost to the taxpayers.

This can be done. We did it in Madison, Wis., where I was mayor from 1983 to 1989.

The Madison commitment began modestly with a pilot project to reduce repair costs and downtime of city vehicles. After a few years, a citywide steering committee that included managers and workers was efficiently running 20 to 30 service-improvement projects at a time.

The city also hired the first full-time municipal quality-improvement coordinator in the United States and formed a network of local quality-improvement partners. They ranged from Rayovac Corp. to the University of Wisconsin's School of Business and its Center for Quality and Productivity Improvement.

The cost of administering the program went from $5,000 in 1984 to just over $100,000 a year--moderate in view of the $1.7 million in savings over six years. In some instances, short-term costs increased when a problem was discovered. For example, taking the city vehicle fleet into preventive maintenance was like going to the dentist for the first time in a decade.

But the big investment involves consulting, training, and a commitment that has to start at the top.

Among the projects under the quality program:

* The police chief and 50 officers volunteered to create an experimental police district based on teamwork and communication with the residents of the district. For example, the officers responded to a community appeal for stronger traffic enforcement by more than tripling the number of speeding citations issued every month.

Improved information transfer between shifts kept overtime incurred by officers who were retained on duty beyond normal hours to only 200 hours one year, compared with an average of nearly 1,000 hours run up by the other districts.

In other police department programs, officers elected their captains and lieutenants, set their own schedules as a team, and surveyed neighborhoods to find what the residents really wanted the police to do. The result was substantilly improved productivity and morale.

* Trash-collection employees studied the pattern of their injuries, and then they made the workplace safer and reduced lost-time injuries. Among the solutions: They asked residents to put refuse in more manageable bundles, changed the specifications on new equipment to make lifting safer, and developed more-rigorous physical examinations for new employees.

* Seven departments that needed city maps for their own purposes jointly created a computerized database and uniform map bank.

* The Community Services Department cut its backlog of applicants for financial assistance for child care from 200 to zero, at no additional cost to the city, by analyzing and streamlining its procedures for determining eligibility.

* Front-line union workers found ways to purchase more-durable snowplows and other equipment, reducing a 28-step purchasing process to three steps. Average turnaround time for repairs dropped from nine days to three at a savings of $700,000 a year.

* City workers became data-gatherers in cost-analysis projects. In one such project, employees of the streets division compiled data for cost comparisons between hauling residential brush to a central site and purchasing equipment to chip it at curbside. A decision in favor of curbside chipping enabled more frequent removal of brush.

None of these projects relied on an unproven hunch, a single individual, or a dictate from on high. They were teamwork decisions based on solid data and documented customer preferences. The best ideas often came from the bottom up.