Lean techniques applied to the homologation request process in an educational institution

Abstract

The present paper was carried out in a technological institute of higher education that has more than 14 years providing technological careers, since 2011 it was certified as category B by the Ecuadorian Higher Education Council. The research objective was to reduce waiting times of students' homologation requests by the application of lean manufacturing techniques. Process analysis was done and the critical process was identified: “Homologation Requests”. This process was studied with historical data since 2016, determined root causes that affect request waiting time, and simulate the current situation with the Simul8 tool. The improvement proposal included lean techniques such as 5S and area distribution, the implementation was modeled by simulating the process and its results were compared with the results of the current situation. After two months of improvements implementation, the objective of this research was achieved by reducing homologation requests response by 24,26%.