Mäntyharju is a municipality that is located in the Southern Savonia region in Finland. The municipality has a population of 5,666.
Mäntyharju Citizen College is an active and innovative college that provides diverse courses and activities to all age citizens, and also to companies.
Smart & Lean has been already for a while a teacher of Mäntyharju Citizens College. The Lean program includes two different courses: Lean Six Sigma White Belt and Lean developers’ workshop.
On 5.10.2021 we had an interactive and communicative afternoon with 10 enthusiastic Lean developers who were all employees of Mäntyharju municipality.
The workshop was one step in a systematic journey to build capacity on municipality staff and at the same time develop municipality processes by applying Lean – principles and methods. The approach is built on real-life needs and a hands-on approach. It means that the developers identify and eliminate problems by improving processes – every day. The taken steps may be small, but the direction is towards excellence.
Two basic Lean tools that have been introduced and practiced at the courses are, of course, Plan-Do-Check-Act and A3 -model (see the below the image).
Smart & Lean 