How to Get LEAN

This week our class focused on topics such as economics, budgeting, and finances in nursing.  This post will explain a budget-friendly system that I have become somewhat familiar with through my employer and is widely used in many companies around the world; the Lean system. 

What is Lean?

The core idea of Lean, which was first established by Toyota in efforts to create a more efficient automobile assembly, is to maximize customer value while minimizing waste.  Eliminating waste along the entire system, instead of at isolated points, creates processes that need less human effort, less space, less capital, and less time to make products and services at far less costs and with much fewer defects, compared with traditional business systems.

 

At the hospital I work for, we use the Lean system specifically in our supply rooms.  We have cut down in cost by creating a system where we have less supplies on the floor (less waste), and a well-organized, accurate ordering process for when things get low.  Companies are able to respond to changing customer needs more efficiently and effectively.

Five Core Principles of Lean

The five-step thought process for guiding the implementation of lean techniques is easy to remember, but not always easy to achieve:

 1. Specify value from the standpoint of the end customer by product family.

 2. Identify all the steps in the value stream for each product family, eliminating whenever possible those steps that do not create value.

 3. Make the value-creating steps occur in tight sequence so the product will flow smoothly toward the customer.

 4. As flow is introduced, let customers pull value from the next upstream activity.

 5. As value is specified, value streams are identified, wasted steps are removed, and flow and pull are introduced, begin the process again and continue it until a state of perfection is reached in which perfect value is created with no waste.

Creating an Organization to Channel Your Value Streams

·         Reorganize your firm by product family and value stream.

·         Create a lean promotion function.

·         Deal with excess people at the outset, and then promise that no one will lose their job in the future due to the introduction of lean techniques.

·         Devise a growth strategy.

·         Remove the anchor-draggers.

·         Once you’ve fixed something, fix it again.

·         “Two steps forward and one step backward is O.K.; no steps forward is not O.K.”

Encourage Lean Thinking

·         Utilize policy deployment.

·         Create a lean accounting system.

·         Pay your people in relation to the performance of your firm.

·         Make performance measures transparent.

·         Teach lean thinking and skills to everyone.

·         Right-size your tools, such as production equipment and information systems.