Pillar or platform - A taxonomy for process improvement activities in public services

Research in the area of lean in public services, and particularly implementation, needs to develop from reporting individual cases to provide a taxonomy that can be taught and applied by researchers and practitioners. The purpose of this paper is to outline two main approaches to Process Improvement Activities (PIA). This will provide researchers with a model to study lean implementation and practitioners with a decision-making taxonomy when designing lean implementations. The paper proposes two PIA approaches, Pillar and Platform, and tests the validity of these approaches through two organisational case studies. Within these case studies, 96 PIAs are considered. For each of the cases, the degree to which the taxonomy supports decision making is explored and issues associated with each implementation approach are discussed. The paper finds that Pillar and Platform taxonomy can be used as a metaphor for practitioners to better understand choices when planning a programme of process improvement particularly based on the organisation’s lean maturity.