I wanted to post a few updates about some efforts related to the Lean Enterprise Institute:
- WIHI audio session on lean healthcare today 4 PM with John Toussaint, Steve Spear, and Gary Kaplan
- The upcoming book “On the Mend“
- Our Lean Healthcare Transformation Summit
WIHI
The free session from the Institute for Healthcare Improvement will be broadcast live on the web, or it will also be available for free download/streaming after the fact. Have comments as/after you listen? Post them here on my blog. I am going to try to listen live, as well.
On the Mend
The LEI's upcoming publication by John Toussaint, MD and Roger Gerard, PhD about the ThedaCare lean journey now has its final cover design, which you can also see on the LEI page for the book: www.onthemendbook.com. You can also download the introduction and Chapter 2 of the book as free PDFs.
You can also follow the book on Twitter (@OnTheMendBook) or follow it and discuss the book on Facebook (www.facebook.com/OnTheMendBook).
Lean Healthcare Transformation Summit
You can still register for our Summit, being held in Orlando June 9 and 10. Click here for more details. There are a number of optional Pre-Summit Workshops on the 7th and 8th that you can register for (although my Key Concepts of Lean in Healthcare workshop is sold out).
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Check out my latest book, The Mistakes That Make Us: Cultivating a Culture of Learning and Innovation:
You can also read the latest LEI newsletter about the Summit and book:
http://www.lean.org/newsletters/05_06_10_newsletter.html
Comments from Gary Kaplan MD (CEO at Virginia Mason):
– How did Toyota take their eye off the ball, growing too fast? They strayed from lean principles. “It’s heightened the vigilence at Virginia Mason.”
– When VMMC started, they decided “it’s our management system” — not dabbling, not just doing projects. They decided to commit to training all 5,000 people in the organization.
Some other quotes and comments from the WIHI event:
The recent problems with Toyota’s quality were pointed to as a “teachable moment” that we can learn from. John Toussaint said their problems “prove that the lean journey is a challenge to stay focused and disciplined” on.
Steve Spear said Toyota’s relevance to healthcare is that Toyota’s success came from learning how to integrate a huge number of technical specialties into a well-integrated system. “Healthcare is like 1980’s manufacturing, having silos without good systems to mesh things.” Toyota learned the basic science of how to design systems (something that healthcare would do well to emulate). Healthcare has the technical silo expertise, but not systems design. Learning and improving systems design requires “constant cultivation.”