DailyKaizen

I am curious about the reaction that Art Bryne received when he said this to some of Wiremold’s suppliers. My guess is that it wasn’t universally positive.

I have struggled with this concept here. Yesterday, I attempted to explain it to a group of physician colleagues, with the analogy that their ideas for improvement were inventory. For the purposes of telling the story and being as honest as possible, I’ll say that my success in doing this was fair to poor. The question came regarding our ability to accept input for changes, and why, using a one piece-flow design, we would not be able to continuously accept input, maintain an list, and then work down the list as we go.

This led to an attempt by me to explain LEAN in about 30 seconds, with a very cordial discussion following, but a less satisfying feeling at the end than I would have liked.

I have had similar interesting experiences explaining this concept in other areas - that it is ultimately not in the best interest of the organization for one unit to create a production calendar that is isolated from the other value-added portions of the organization. I have worked to explain that there either needs to be synchronization (better), or no hand-off at all, with the expertise localized in one area or person (best).

I suppose what I can take from this educational experience is the opportunity to create a small teaching module on one piece flow in health care, not from the clinical delivery perspective (e.g. flow of patients), but from the system improvement side (health information technology).

The silver lining on all of this is that a large integrated delivery system affords many opportunities to test out educational approaches until the right one is reached.

Trackback This Post | Subscribe to the comments through RSS Feed