Recently, I was working with a committee of leaders, support staff, and line personnel interested in encouraging and soliciting suggestions from their firefighters in an effort to improve their operations and service. The agency already had an employee suggestion program that worked well, but the committee members wanted to do more than just update this program and give it a fancy name like “innovation.” What they wanted was to empower people to make or try small changes in their operations and service.

During the discussions, the concept of “lean manufacturing” came up. Because of its title and origin, we, as members of the fire service, might not initially think of learning about or using the concepts of lean manufacturing. After all, we don’t manufacture a product. However, fire service members can work toward making their fire department a “lean enterprise.” A lean enterprise strives to reduce waste and improve the workflow. A lean enterprise attempts to make the work simple enough to understand, do, and manage.

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