Managing Operations Improvement In Romanian Public Services

This paper aims to develop a pleading for the transfer of best practices to improving the operational activity in the Romanian public institutions. The practice of implementation demonstrates that the perception of many executives in the Romanian private enterprises regarding the set of tools to improve processes and assimilation of lean philosophy is not a very favorable and encouraging one. It can be said that only some large enterprises had successfully introduced in their daily practice and organization the improvement principles, the operational optimization and the elimination of waste sources. In the SMEs, and especially in the services the experiences are isolated, but they have demonstrated the usefulness (the frequency of saving goals indicate, indeed, the need for proliferation of continuous improvement principles). Regarding the public organizations, the implementation of the new management system of designing and operating the current practices is pretty unknown, accepted at declarative level, but becomes, when is planned and implemented rather a burden on managers who should take on this challenge. Both in public management and private management, today the focus is on people and relationships (processes and projects), starting of course with the work organization. The good practices successfully proved in the private management in the recent decades are transferred today to public institutions; and the Romanian public organizations tend to adapt, also in terms of processes optimization. The study aims to analyze the functioning of the hypothetical management system of processes improvements, respectively the applying of lean tools and principles within the public Romanian institution. They are treated some dysfunctions observed within the process of understanding the utility aspects and throughout the assuming of operational improvement goals within these organizations. The qualitative observations, the critical interpretations and the opinions expressed are strictly the views of the author and may differ from those of representatives of any public institutions. The entire investigative approach converges to a cynical conclusion: the adaptation and the implementation of process improvements principles in the public entities could be in short terms an objective determined by external incentives and not a consciously assumed solution. Finally, we expose some of the ideas for deepening and expanding our practical findings and conclusions.