Pop-up Palooza: So You Think You Can Improve a Process? Come Find Out!

Mojgan Amini
Shawn Munro
Prachi Raheja
Lynn Underwood

Hatlen Theater
Wed, Jul 17 1:00pm - 2:30pm

You may have heard about Process Palooza -- a one-of-a-kind extravaganza focusing on business process improvement that has taken on a life of its own, snowballing into a university-wide embrace of continuous improvement and business excellence. At the heart of Process Palooza is a high-stakes, fast-paced competition dubbed The Great LSS Race! LSS stands for Lean Six Sigma, a process improvement methodology built on reducing waste and improving efficiency. The competition puts teams’ LSS skills to the test by analyzing a messed-up process and having judges evaluate just how significantly they improved it. What sets this competition apart is that actual campus business processes are used! At the end, teams identify numerous improvement suggestions backed by real data.

This session aims to pack the same energy and outcome into a 90-minute session -- a Pop-up Palooza.

After a brief introduction to the Process Palooza event, LSS tools and key improvement objectives, we will engage the audience to identify a campus business process that is cumbersome, gather key data elements, and ring the opening bell to crowdsource improvement suggestions in real-time. Participants are encouraged to leverage fishbone diagrams, value stream maps, and other analysis techniques to really get a handle on the problem. Finally, innovative suggestions to improve the process will be presented to all. The offending process gets to go home with a list of improvement recommendations.

Of course, the competition would not be complete without prizes! We’ll have plenty of Popcorn, Poptarts, Poprocks, Soda Pop) to celebrate the outcome of this Pop-up Palooza!

Previous Knowledge
No prior experience is needed, however, those with exposure to Lean Six Sigma will be able to apply their skills in solving a real-world business problem.

Software Installation Expectation
Powerpoint: to support presentation delivery

Web Browser: for and reference to tools and interactive participation

Nice to have: Flip chart(s), whiteboard(s)

Session Skill Level
Intermediate

Session Track
Planning and Managing IT Investments