Healthcare Can Benefit Greatly Using Lean Techniques
In recent years healthcare has been under enormous pressure to reduce cost and improve customer satisfaction. Hospitals getting squeezed on all sides and seeing rising costs are having to improve everything they do or risk going out of business. Hospitals have looked at what manufacturing has done to reduce cost and many have started to implement Lean Six Sigma as a way to analyze and improve...
Read MoreA Lean Strategy Requires Lean To Be the Foundational Core For Everything You Do
Many companies think they can implement lean by simply laying it on top of what they already do or delegating it to their operations folks. This simply won’t work! In order for you to be successful, lean must be a strategic approach that effects everything you do. As an organization, you need to evaluate all your processes to determine the value-add you provide your customers. Customers...
Read MoreDeveloping A Successful LSS Program Takes A Lot Of Work, But The Rewards & Payback Are Tremendous!
The following are guidelines and tips that I have found over the years to be beneficial in the deployment of a Lean Six Sigma initiative. Lean Six Sigma is a management strategy and, like any strategy, needs to have the necessary resources and commitment allocated to make it successful. Top Management Without top management support, the Lean Six Sigma effort is doomed to fail. ...
Read MoreUse Gemba Walks to Uncover Problems & Promote Accountability
Gemba is a Japanese word that means the real place where value is created. A gemba walk is a management tool whose purpose is to have managers walk the front line where they can see problems as they are occurring, ask questions and allow them to create follow-up on problems and promote accountability. Problems are most visible where they occur and the best ideas for solving them will come...
Read MoreStandardize Work Process To Provide Customers Better Products & Services
Much of the work we do consists of repetitive tasks: changing a die in a stamping press, closing the books every month or running a weekly or monthly meeting. These repetitive tasks can be studied and improved to make them more efficient, reliable, easier, safer, and more productive. We then document the best method and teach it to everyone associated with the task. This will make...
Read MoreInvest in Employees And Make Them The Center of Your Lean Transformation
Much has been written about why few organizations succeed in making a lean transformation. Some have stated the number to be less than 10% and when compared with Toyota the number becomes even worse and as low as 1%. What is the reason for this? What’s missing? I think it centers on employee involvement and not making employees the center of the lean transformation. Companies that...
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