I am continually asked for the prescription to whole system lean transformation. Being a physician I guess people expect me to write it out and hand it to them. I suppose they think they can then go to the pharmacy and get the pills and they will magically know what to do. Unfortunately,nothing important in life works like that. The journey of continuous improvement using lean is very personal. Each person as well as each organization needs to find their own way. There is no one "right way" to implement lean in healthcare or lean in any company. It is a series of trials and learnings, making many mistakes but applying PDSA to understand those mistakes and try new experiments.
What I will attempt to do is frame the journey over the next few weeks. Not telling you how to implement lean in your organization but explaining the framework leaders need to consider as they tackle this monumental task. I will try to point you to data along the way and examples that may help but you must remember this is all based on an N of one.I have been the CEO of only one healthcare organization that is implementing lean (ThedaCare).I have had the privilege to go to gemba at many great companies(52 in the last 18 months) including some in healthcare and I will try to incorporate examples from these organizations as well.The purpose of these posts is to start a dialog about what is working and what isn't so we can accelerate our learning together.Feel free to disagree with me ,share your own experience or offer advice.
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