Lean Pioneer: When Lean Meets a Learning Mindset
How one College of Engineering team turned Lean learning, curiosity and AI into a simpler way to document work
Continuous improvement often starts with learning a new tool or technique. The real impact comes from what happens next: applying it to everyday work, experimenting with better approaches and sharing what works.
This is exactly what happened in the College of Engineering IT team, led by Steve Pigg, Executive Director of Information Technology.
Steve’s continuous improvement journey began with a Lean White Belt course. Interested in going further, he enrolled in a Lean Six Sigma Green Belt cohort through UC Davis Continuing and Professional Education (CPE). Steve then brought Lean back to his organization, inviting AdminIT’s Office of Business Transformation (OBT) to deliver a customized White Belt session for the IT team. The room was full. The sticky notes were flying.
And the team kept going.
Finding a simpler way to map processes
As College of Engineering IT began creating and updating process documentation more regularly, the team looked for a faster way to create editable process maps without purchasing additional software.
They experimented with several tools and ultimately developed a repeatable method using Google Gemini and draw.io, a free, open-source diagramming tool. With the right prompt, Gemini can help turn written process information into a format that can be imported into draw.io and edited as a workflow.
“We are creating and/or editing process documentation daily. Being IT people, we searched for a way to leverage AI tools in this effort.” — Steve Pigg, College of Engineering
The team didn’t stop after finding something that worked. They documented the method as standard work and shared it through the Knowledge Base so others could use it too.
That’s continuous improvement in action.
Learn it. Try it. Improve it. Standardize it. Share it.
Try it yourself
Google Gemini is available to the UC Davis community as a campus-supported generative AI tool. Use it to help organize process steps, identify decision points, or structure information for an editable workflow.
Start with a process you know well, ask Gemini to help organize the steps for a flowchart, and then validate the result with the people who do the work.
Learn more: Create editable flowcharts using Gemini
Always review and validate AI-generated content before using it as official process documentation.