Very interesting to hear what you are doing. Picking up on some other comments I believe the teaching needs to focus on end to end value for the customer, as per TPS, but also on a more human level ‘treat others only as you would like to be treated yourself’. Lets also think about PPS as they say in Toyota (Practical Problem Solving), which in my view is just an extension of TOC problem solving. I’m sure you will convert the ex’ecs. Keeep it going.

Thanks for the comments.

Jon, to answer your question you are 100% correct. The reason we are breaking them up is simply a question of the speed our leaders can learn. The Value Stream session will focus on teaching them to understand how patients flow our systems. The System thinking will bring this same view, but add in our human, quality, management and other supporting systems.

Brian, I could not agree more about teaching Respect for People. Our goal is to teach this and the other principles of Lean throughout the sessions and during our 1:1 coaching of executives. We hope to do it within the work as opposed to sepearte. Our experience is that unless the theory is tied to action it is often missed.

Take care,

Lee

I think it is just as important to teach the soft skills of “respect for people” as well as reinforcing how management supports the floor workers.

If executives do not embrace the image of the floor leader running to help a worker with yellow-lit andon, your Lean transformation will never reach its potential.

I am sure you are covering this but I didn’t see it listed!

Great to see you taking the lean education to the highest level at GHC. I am curious about how you have distinguished between value stream improvement and system improvement. They would seem to be the same, unless systems were discrete and not linked in to the value streams they were supporting.

Can you explain a bit more at some point in the future perhaps?

Jon