MENU The Money is in the Mail (Room)
Sometimes the most mundane-sounding improvements can have great impact.
At a public employee retirement agency, we finished a Kaizen that was focused on the returned mail process – not that sexy a topic, but…
It is important to the agency because not having correct addresses is a pain in terms of work for staff and money for members. Correcting addresses is surprisingly costly on an annual basis in terms of system productivity and member satisfaction.
The team found a lot of waste and variation in the process and made numerous improvements – many of them proactive measures. As a result:
- Members will get services faster
- A multi-month backlog of returned mail will be eliminated
- Time to make address changes will be reduced from 1 week to 1 day (cycle time)
- The entire process (lead time) will be reduced by approximately 50%
That’s faster, better and cheaper. Great return on effort from improving a support process.