toyota Project

This year, we had the opportunity to collaborate with the Toyota Production Support Centre (TSSC) to streamline internal processes for improved efficiency, benefiting both our staff and clients.

The lean management process used by TSSC is based on the work of Kiichiro Toyoda, founder of Toyota and can be applied to any process or industry. The purpose of our work with TSSC was to identify problems within our business, explore their root causes, and establish best practice processes that can be continually improved over time.

To gain an understanding of the organisation, the TSSC Team from Melbourne attended three, three-day workshops with an internal RA Tas project team. The work commenced with a review of our Family and Relationship Counselling Service, with particular focus on how we can reduce our response time when clients call us for support.

The purpose of our work with TSSC was to identify problems within our business, explore their root causes, and establish best practice processes that can be continually improved over time.

The RA Tas project team used Ji Koutei Kanketsu (JKK), a quality model, to map and define the current process. It encompasses the entire journey, starting from the moment a potential service user contacts RA Tas by phone, through to completion of their first appointment, and finally to making a follow- up appointment. The project team also mapped the practitioner administration tasks that are required, prior to and following the clients first appointment.

The project team also focused on optimising scheduling and making the best use of available resources at each site. They discovered that practitioner schedules often exceeded the number of available rooms, which hindered the client services team from booking appointments in practitioner diaries. However, the team was excited to find that each site does have sufficient room resources, provided that allocation and scheduling are managed differently. The TSSC team supported the project team to set Key Performance Indicators to measure our success in providing a timely response to client inquiries. Project members have already begun applying the principles learned through this process to other areas of the organisation.

We are excited to continue our journey with the TSSC and would like to thank our internal project team (Matilda, Crystal, Darisha, Nathan, Sandi, Simone, Quinten, Leah, Andrew, and Mel) for dedicating time to this important project.