Lean Is At Work… From the Factory Floor to the Operating Room
By Charles Hagood
Are you like many other Lean practitioners in that you considered the term "Lean
Enterprise" to only be applicable to the manufacturing giants of industry? Well
think again! Lean, first created as a part of the Toyota Production System (TPS),
is an operational approach and methodology embraced by world-class companies throughout
the world. With proven results Lean is now making its way into non-manufacturing
industries such as insurance, banking, and the healthcare industry.
The manufacturing industry had many skeptics in the late 1980's and early 1990's
who initially thought Lean would be just another buzzword or management fad by
joining such flashes in the pan as TQM and Re-engineering. A decade later these
proven Lean principles have not only survived, but many now consider Lean a requirement
for survival in the cost conscious and cut-throat world of manufacturing. This
is partially because Lean organizations are vigilant in identifying waste within
their value streams (the complete flow of a service from the customers perspective)
and processes. They are relentless in their applications of eliminating or drastically
reducing waste that adds no value to the customer experience. Lean, which ultimately
permeates all that an organization does, is now being applied with resounding
success to the healthcare industry and is simply called "LeanHealthcare."
LeanHealthcare is a term that is still foreign to many in an industry that is
fraught with skyrocketing costs, poor patient (customer) and caregiver (employee)
satisfaction, complex and cumbersome I.T. solutions, nursing shortages, physician
frustration, and malpractice cases resulting from inadvertent errors and oversights.
The basic principles of Lean are tailor made for the healthcare industry, which
is made up of many "manufacturing like" processes but has always struggled to
evaluate those same processes like the 'metal bending industrial sector'.
One reason the Lean practice is somewhat foreign to many in healthcare is apparent
to experienced Lean practitioners. Many other industries have attempted to drastically
improve their processes with increased automation and software alone. I have
observed some in the healthcare industry are following the same path today.
Many of the necessary tasks required in today's healthcare sector are inefficient
if not impossible without a solid I.T platform, but despite the importance of
such systems they cannot be looked to as a cure for all the operational issues
that plague this industry. Recently one of our client organizations had a goal
to decrease their turnover time in the Operating Room (OR). Through the use of
LeanHealthcare tools, waste, idle time and efforts that added no value from the
Patients or Physicians perspective were eliminated. Additionally, Visual Indicators
were put in place to help reduce errors and rework. The Team was able to reduce
the turnover time immediately by 50%. This was achieved with minimal investment
and without any changes to the hospital or departmental IT systems.
In a Lean organization, processes and "value streams" associated with services,
products, and patient care are continually evaluated for waste. Such waste is
then attacked with a vengeance using a number of industry proven methods. Tools
such as: [Click Here to Continue]
