by Ted Eytan, on 18 Apr 2006 05:48 am
The Journey
Sharing LEAN
Yesterday, I had two experiences sharing LEAN with the “unitiated.”
In the first instance, it was with one of our key vendors/partners. I explained what we were doing to improve our way of doing business, and how, in the Toyota world, Toyota reaches out to its suppliers and partners with them to improve service. Toyota will even do this with suppliers that also serve its competitors, to serve Toyota’s interests, but also society as a whole. My colleague was interested in the concept, but felt that Group Health is a leading edge innovative organization. If his company adopted a LEAN approach, what about his other clients? We discussed this more, and what this comes down to, is, what would you have dominate your way of doing business, an inefficient way, or an efficient way, and what is your company’s purpose? Are there ways for you to adopt an efficient process and teach others to become efficient? If another client does not wish to be more efficient, can you still become efficient in a way that does not impact them? The studies of this process say the answer is yes.
The second experience was a group of students from the University who were interviewing me about our electronic medical records efforts. As part of the interview, I took them on a tour, and stopped at our “Quality Improvement Support Board.” I am getting better practice of explaining what this board does for us. It is a white board, not a plasma display, not a database. It tells me (or anyone who walks by it):
- What medical centers or service lines we are supporting, now and two into the future
- How many small, medium, and big ticket items are planned
- How many small, medium, and big ticket items are being worked on
- How many small, medium, and big ticket items are done
- What each item is
- How busy each team is
It tells me this in the blink of an eye. I will post a picture of it here soon. In many ways, it is similar to the whiteboard that we (used to) use in our urgent care centers. Interestingly, those have become plasma displays that are computer controlled. Is that more efficient than people keeping up a white board? We will never know. They are an integral part of a larger system we use to automate those care centers, which has tremendous value to our patients.