Here is the third short, simple Kaizen education video from KaiNexus. We are embedding these videos into our web-based software, to provide short tips and hints for our healthcare users. We're also making the videos available on our YouTube Channel and our education videos playlist. Subscribe to our channel to be notified of each new one that's released.
Click here to see all of the videos through my blog or here to view them on the KaiNexus website. We also have an RSS feed and a podcast on the iTunes Store.
This video addresses the topic of identifying waste and “non value added” steps in our daily work, using that as a way of generating opportunities for improvement.
Video updated September, 2014 – View on YouTube.
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You can read more about waste and non-value-added activities in my book Lean Hospitals. See a preview of that section via Google Books (page 31).
Approximate transcript of the video:
Video #3 – reducing NVA steps
Hi, I'm Mark Graban from KaiNexus.
The topic for this video is learning how to reduce wasteful steps in a process. These are often referred to as non-value-added steps.
Imagine a patient has a collapsed lung and what he REALLY needs is a chest tube – and yet you can't find one in the cabinet where it's supposed to be.
In the Lean framework, Value can be defined as any activity that actually meets the patient's needs – this includes activities that help identify the correct diagnosis and activity that delivers the correct treatment.
On the other hand, waste can be defined as anything that interferes with providing the best patient care in the most efficient way.
So, in our example, the value-added-step is the actual insertion of the chest tube. The waste, or non-value-added step, is all of the time and motion required to run around to find a chest tube.
Non-value added steps are always frustrating and sometimes dangerous. One way to find non-value-added steps in your work is to take note whenever you don't have supplies, equipment, information, or medications you need to provide care to your patient
Health care workers are experts at work arounds because they are motivated smart people that do what ever its takes to get the job done. But, we will do better in the long run by improving our processes to eliminate these workarounds and that waste.
The next time you find yourself looking for something or taking extra steps,that's a great opportunity to stop, log into KaiNexus and enter your opportunity for improvement. We should all aim to improve the system by identifying waste or non-value-added steps so we can prevent that waste from reoccurring.
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