January 9, 1996

To: Lane Board of Education and College Staff
From: Jerry Moskus, Linda Fossen, Marie Matsen, Mary Spilde, Larry Warford

Subject: Process Redesign

Last year, Executive Cabinet of Lane Community College concluded that the college must improve the effectiveness and efficiency of its internal processes to meet its continuing operating challenges. These challenges come in the form of increased enrollment, demographic changes, increasing administrative service demand and changing technology. All the while, these challenges are occurring in an environment of tightening operating funds and an erosion over several years of service sector budgets.

To meet these challenges, Lane has initiated a number of college-wide programs including recent organizational restructuring, team building, leadership training and significant investments in information technology via new applications and networking. We believe that the time has come to fundamentally rethink and radically improve the college's major processes. We believe that the college can achieve significant results through Process Redesign projects by containing and/or reducing operating costs, freeing money to spend on important new programs, increasing quality of services, and improving effectiveness and efficiency across traditional departmental boundaries.

The current Process Redesign project is divided into four phases: Explore and Plan; Analyze; Redesign; and Implement.

We began the Explore and Plan Phase when we formed a Project Management Team in January 1995 to explore the feasibility of utilizing process redesign tools and methodology to aid the college. The Board approved funds for the initial phase in spring 1995. In the summer of 1995, assessments of the college's information technology environment and core processes were completed. As a result, a number of information technology opportunities were identified and the services to students process was selected as the initial process for redesign.

A leadership team, comprising key management, faculty and classified staff, was formed in September 1995 and has been meeting weekly since mid-November . The Leadership Team's primary responsibilities include: communicating the strategic direction and vision for design, selecting processes for redesign; defining scope limitations; monitoring overall project progress; reviewing process change proposals and making recommendations to Executive Cabinet; developing and implementing change management strategies; and sponsoring campus-wide communications.

We are encouraged and excited by the results obtained in the first two phases. The information technology assessment provided information and recommendations that are the impetus for major changes in Computer Services. Many of these changes are taking place already. The process selection team not only identified services to students as the first project, but recommended several other future projects and identified many quick wins (improvements that may be implemented quickly without going through major process redesign). We believe that the first major project--services to students--provides a significant opportunity to revamp a process that is highly fragmented. We anticipate that the project will result in major improvements in how we serve students, and in employee work loads. In the long term, we believe that changes will result in greater cost efficiency as well.

We encourage you to learn more about the Process Redesign project. The Leadership Team will try to keep staff informed throughout the process. As we move into the next phases of the project, we encourage staff to participate in whatever ways are available.

LEADERSHIP TEAM