About Westen Chances
Western Chances awards scholarships that provide financial assistance to talented and motivated young people in Melbourne’s western suburbs whose circumstances prevent them from attaining certain educational or career opportunities. Through an existing partnership with the Toyota Community Trust, Western Chances reached out to TSSC for support
Business Need
The Western Chances team were experiencing a high number of scholarship applications being received with missing or incomplete documentation. This absent paperwork was placing high administrative burden on the small team, resulting in increased processing times and overall assessment delays.
Improvement Strategy
Over a four-month period the TSSC team helped to introduce TPS tools that allowed the Western Chances team to:
- Establish clearer work standards through application of Jidoka principles, helping build quality into the process
- Prioritise applications based on processing time targets, using visual tools to track progress and identify assessment delays
- Overcome delays and prevent recurrence by establishing clear triggers for action and adopting a structured problem-solving approach
Results
By the end of the project, the average scholarship assessment lead-time had reduced by 57% and the number of applications received with incomplete supporting documents dropped by 87%. These improvements allowed the team to award a record number of scholarships to meet the increased demand for support, helping even more students to reach their full potential.
Mieruka
How to see problems
Jidoka
Building in Quality