Management techniques introduced by Toyota may soon be used in a bid to improve the efficiency of Fort Dodge government services.
Toyota called it lean manufacturing, but the city version is known as lean government. It's a long-term system of change that seeks to squeeze out any inefficiencies in a given task.
On Saturday, City Manager David Fierke described lean government as the ''logical next step of what we've been doing all along.''
He added that adopting lean government is necessary as well as logical.
''If we stay with the status quo, we're going to get to the point where we're in a financial crisis,'' he said.
He is recommending that the council hire PDG of Story City to help implement lean government practices. The company would be paid $5,400 a month for the first year of its services, $3,750 a month for the second year and $2,500 a month for the third year.
The city also received a proposal from Argent Global Services of Oklahoma City, Okla. That firm would charge between $8,400 to $55,000, depending on the level of service provided.
Fierke said hiring a firm is necessary because no one on the city staff has the training to conduct a thorough lean government review.
The City Council is expected to act on hiring PDG on March 9. That hiring would start a process that would take five to 10 years to fully implement, according to Mayor Terry Lutz. He advocates the lean government process as a way to achieve his goal of reducing the city's tax-supported operating budget by 3 percent over two years.
Rick Brimeyer, Iowa division president of PDG, said his company helps organizations break down every task they do to find ways to better use the available money. The end result, he said, are better services and happy workers.
Fierke used the example of a broken street sign post to illustrate how lean government works. He said that every city worker who might be involved in handling that problem would meet with a trained moderator from the consulting company in what's called a ''kaizen event.'' During that session, each step in the process of fixing the sign post - from the intial report of the problem to final adjustments on the sign - would be discussed. He said the employees would be asked to recommend better ways to do each step. At the end of the session, a revised way of fixing the sign post would be developed. Fierke said that new method would become the standard procedure.
Lutz said laying off employees is not the ultimate goal of lean government. Fierke noted that the city is launching the process at a time when 42 employees will become eligible for retirement in the next five years.
Contact Bill Shea at (515) 573-2141 or bshea@messengernews.net