This article appeared back in March… March of 2013… as in this year: “Windsor Chrysler workers reduce waste to be world class.” I mean, good for them, but they are just now getting to this (even if the effort started in 2009 or so)… in the auto industry? Many hospitals were applying Lean thinking before then. Was that Chrysler plant expecting Toyota to just go away? I worked at a GM plant from 1995 to 1997 and the writing on the wall was clear that Lean / Toyota Production System was the winning formula.
Thankfully, they have gotten results in the areas you’d expect:
By eliminating waste, Windsor Assembly has achieved cost savings of $232 million since the inception of WCM [world class manufacturing], said Dan Omahen, plant manager. Workplace injuries have been reduced by 81 per cent, he added.
On the quality front, the number of minivans requiring warranty repairs has decreased by 69 per cent.
At least Chrysler / Fiat realizes it’s about people:
At the heart of WCM is employee engagement, said Omahen. Since the implementation of WCM, employees have contributed 97,778 ideas for improvements and 77 per cent were implemented.
“There’s several important pillars here, but the most important one we realize is the people.” Omahen said as he motioned towards a wall of the front office that displays the most outstanding cost-saving ideas by employees. “We want people to take ownership when it comes to driving change.”
Omahen has adopted the language of WCM, referring to employees’ ideas as kaizens — the Japanese word for improvement. One kaizen, for example, came from an engineer whose project saved more than $59,000, he said.
In fact, more than 80 per cent of [plant manager] Omahen’s time now is spent on the factory floor talking to employees.
That’s the leadership style I saw from the second GM plant manager I worked under (he was one of the first GM at the NUMMI joint venture plant with Toyota). Being at the “gemba” (the workplace) and working together on improvement, not just dictating answers to people.
From the Chrysler article:
“Before WCM, we were dictated to,” said Mark Dana, an hourly worker who leads a team of about 10 employees in the plant’s tire assembly area. “Now workers have a say, and as a team, we work to solve problems together.”
That’s the Lean / TPS leadership style. Congrats to Chrysler for finally getting on board…
About LeanBlog.org: Mark Graban is a consultant, author, and speaker in the “lean healthcare” methodology. Mark is author of the Shingo Award-winning book Lean Hospitals and Healthcare Kaizen. Learn more about Mark’s on-site and public workshops. He is also the Chief Improvement Officer for KaiNexus.
My co-author Joe Swartz and I are happy to announce that our book Healthcare Kaizen was named a recipient of the prestigious Shingo Professional Publication and Research Award. The award will be formally presented to the co-authors in early 2014 at the Shingo Prize annual conference. A formal release will be coming out in a few weeks, but we were told we could share this news.
Joe and I are honored by this designation and we thank our mentors and teachers, including Norman Bodek and Masaaki Imai, both of whom contributed “front matter” to be included in our book. Thank you, thank you to them.We also thank all of those whose Kaizen improvement work has inspired us – including the amazing people at Franciscan St. Francis Health System, Joe’s organization, as well as all of the healthcare professionals Mark has worked with at numerous organizations who were willing to share their improvement work. We share this honor with all of them and hope their work continues to inspire others to improve healthcare.
Thanks again to the Shingo Prize Organization for once again honoring my work, after my first book Lean Hospitals also received this recognition in 2009.
Buy the book via Amazon.com or our publisher Productivity Press. Speaking of Productivity Press, thanks go to our acquisition editor, Kris Mednansky, and the team there.
This Award is named in honor of Dr. Shigeo Shingo, credited as one of the creators of the Toyota Production System. It’s also an honor to included with such an illustrious list of previous Research Award winners.
About LeanBlog.org: Mark Graban is a consultant, author, and speaker in the “lean healthcare” methodology. Mark is author of the Shingo Award-winning book Lean Hospitals and Healthcare Kaizen. Learn more about Mark’s on-site and public workshops. He is also the Chief Improvement Officer for KaiNexus.
MP3 File (run time 28:17)
My guest for podcast #175 is Mike Taubitz of the firm Sustainable Lean and FDR Safety. Mike is a retired GM employee (including a stint as Global Safety Director) and we met at the Michigan Lean Consortium conference in 2011. We quickly discovered our shared interest in Dr. Deming, Lean, and, most importantly, safety improvement.
I hope you enjoy our chat about his background and lessons from his career, the integration of Lean practices and safety improvement, lessons from Paul O’Neill and other great topics. Like my dad, Mike is a graduate of the then General Motors Institute (now Kettering University).
Some key quotes:
- “It’s not just what you do, but why.”
- 5S is not just neat, clean, and organized – it’s about team identifying waste and developing standards
- We are “a nation of solution seekers” instead of working on “foundational thinking.”
For a link to this episode, refer people to www.leanblog.org/175.
For earlier episodes, visit the main Podcast page, which includes information on how to subscribe via RSS or via Apple iTunes.
You can use the player (use the VCR-type controls) at the top of the post to listen to a streaming version of the podcast (or click here for the streaming audio and RSS subscription). The streaming link is faster for one-time listening (hardly any delay to start listening). Or you can use the download link to put it on your iPod or other MP3 player.
A new way to listen to free streaming episodes of the podcast: Download the free Stitcher app and use promo code LEANBLOG for a chance to win $100.
If you have feedback on the podcast, or any questions for me or my guests, you can email me at leanpodcast@gmail.com or you can call and leave a voicemail by calling the “Lean Line” at (817) 776-LEAN (817-776-5326) or contact me via Skype id “mgraban”. Please give your location and your first name. Any comments (email or voicemail) might be used in follow ups to the podcast.
About LeanBlog.org: Mark Graban is a consultant, author, and speaker in the “lean healthcare” methodology. Mark is author of the Shingo Award-winning book Lean Hospitals and Healthcare Kaizen. Learn more about Mark’s on-site and public workshops. He is also the Chief Improvement Officer for KaiNexus.
Hosted by Steve Hoeft, author of the book Stories from My Sensei: Two Decades of Lessons Learned Implementing Toyota-Style Systems
, I had a chance to visit Scott & White Hospital in Temple, Texas. With his permission (but without editorial review), I am sharing some stories from my visit to their excellent health system (which is in the process of merging with the larger Baylor Health system in the Dallas / Fort Worth area).
Baylor is one of the largest health care providers in North Texas with about $4 billion in annual revenue. Scott & White, with a national reputation for quality care and efficiency, is dominant in Central Texas. (link)
Huddle Room
The visit started with a stop in their “huddle room” where the senior leadership team, including the hospital CEO and the system CEO, Dr. Bob Pryor, have their daily stand up meeting. It’s a room similar to the “visual room” at ThedaCare that’s full of strategy deployment objectives and actions. Dr. Pryor is expected to be the system COO at the merged Baylor/S&W system. 15 senior leaders packed themselves int he room, as part of a cascading series of huddles that go all the way down to the front line staff for rapid communication up and down the chain in both directions.
One wall of the room has “leader standard work” posted for many executives, including the CEO. Each posted document lists items that are done daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly. This is a new initiative, so not every leader had their SW document posted yet.
The second wall is their Hoshin Planning board (another term for strategy deployment)… the “Scott & White Alignment Tool” (or SWAT), to gain alignment in the organization around their goals (in five categories) and HOW the goals will be accomplished. The system CEO was personally reviewing progress against these goals.
The third wall was their “SQDCM” metrics board, showing performance in the typical Lean areas of Safety, Quality, Delivery, Cost, and Morale. These goals are aligned at each level of the organization (as we also see at ThedaCare, see their DVD on this process: Thinking Lean at ThedaCare: Strategy Deployment
).
The fourth wall is a white board that has in-progress “A3s” and other working initiatives.
Walls 2 and 4 (I just realized I didn’t describe them in order):
The leadership team models a problem solving behavior of four questions:
- What’s the target?
- How are you doing versus the goal?
- What are your ideas or action plan?
- How can I help?
As the leadership team review metrics, common questions were “are we working that action plan?” and “do we understand why?” As one bit of progress was discussed, Dr. Pryor said “I’d like to go see that” (and I’m betting that he did). As another issue was discussed, Dr. Pryor emphasized the classic “no problems is a problem” mindset of Lean.
Dr. Pryor ended the huddle by asking, and it seemed very sincere, “Any suggestions for me? How can I do things better?”
Lean Management Systems
Lean is by no means new to Scott & White, but their Lean Management System effort started about a year ago after visiting the Toyota Georgetown plant in Kentucky.
The LMS includes four levels of “accountability meetings”:
- Front-line staff
- Supervisors, managers directors (ideas that Level 1 can’t address get escalated)
- Directors / VP / Chief Nurse Executive
- Senior leadership team
It also includes leader standard work (as seen in the executive meeting), visual controls, and daily accountability – combining for a process focus for the organization.
Huddles
Team huddles are used to work issues that can be worked on quickly, measuring the impact of changes. For example, a team might work on:
- Reducing the number of call lights per day (by more effective hourly rounding on patients)
- Noise at night
- Pain management for patients
A team worked on an issue related to labor and delivery, measuring patient wait times DAILY and huddling to talk about reasons for delay and capturing suggestions for improvement.
The CNE said this whole management process was a “life changing experience for me as a leader” and “I wouldn’t go back to the old ways.”
They emphasized that the improvement process “has to be easy” and they had been “making it too hard” before. The teams charted data by hand now, for example. The process was “challenging for the first few months, but one success happened” it took off. I have seen this with the Kaizen process in other organizations. Once people see that it works, you no longer have to push. The improvement process and the things being measured “has to be meaningful to them” (the staff).
Dr. Pryor said, “For 115 years, we didn’t do this… we didn’t ask what’s meaningful and we didn’t ask for their ideas.”
Summary
I saw many great Lean management practices at Scott & White. The years of Lean leadership provided by Marji Henry have been supplemented with the addition of Steve Hoeft (formerly of the University of Michigan and Altarum Institute). They have hired people away from Toyota and have a lot of internal coaches and talent.
Many teams presented projects and huddle board work that they had done. It’s great to see educated and passionate healthcare professionals have a methodology for reaching their goals for improving patient care.
More impressively, the senior leaders, from Dr. Pryor on down, are VERY committed to the Lean management system, including modeling these behaviors themselves. It’s easy to find a place to see Lean tools and tactics — it’s much harder to find a place where you can wee Lean management being practiced every day.
About LeanBlog.org: Mark Graban is a consultant, author, and speaker in the “lean healthcare” methodology. Mark is author of the Shingo Award-winning book Lean Hospitals and Healthcare Kaizen. Learn more about Mark’s on-site and public workshops. He is also the Chief Improvement Officer for KaiNexus.
