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My Book "Lean Hospitals" and Similarities to Manufacturing
July 31, 2008

I haven't mentioned it here, since the focus is manufacturing, but I am the author of a newly published book from Productivity Press.

The book is called "Lean Hospitals: Improving Quality, Patient Safety, and Employee Satisfaction." You can learn more, including how to order, at my website for the book.



After 10 years of working in manufacturing, I shifted to healthcare full-time in 2005. While I have always had a passion for Lean Manufacturing, I really enjoy practicing the Lean methods and teaching people in hospitals, more so than I did in manufacturing.

There is such widespread "waste" in healthcare settings, and it harms everybody. Waste and bad processes cause patients to wait or, more critically, even leads to quality and personal safety problems. Waste wears on the employees, as they spend far too much time on non-value added work, instead of on patient care activities. Waste increases costs for hospitals and robs them of opportunities to expand offerings to their patients and communities.

All of the "8 types of waste" can be found in any hospital: defects, overproduction, transportation, waiting, inventory, motion, overprocessing, and the waste of talent.

There are many familiar phrases to be overheard in a hospital, sadly:

"Nobody listens to me"

"We just work around those problems instead of really fixing things."

"We're told just to be careful."

"I'm expected to check my brain at the door -- I'm viewed as a troublemaker if I question things."

It's sad when you hear those comments in a factory. It seems even worse to hear them in a hospital.

One other type of comment that might seem familiar is complaints about, what else, information systems. I spent a lot of time working with hospital laboratories and you hear similar comments about "Laboratory Information System" as you would hear about a new ERP system in a factory. Things like "the old system actually worked better" are said after new standardized software is put in place and labs are forced to change their processes to fit the system, or they struggle through the mismatch. Older LIS systems were often heavily customized (as older MRP/ERP) systems were and the new vendor has promised the benefits of "best practices" that are embedded in the software -- but those practices don't line up with their needs.

Anyway, I hope you will check out my book if you are interested in how Lean is helping hospitals improve. I always tell my friends in manufacturing that there's no better way to understand core Lean principles than to be forced to think through them in another industry and another setting. I hope you like the book.

Posted by Mark Graban on July 31, 2008 | Comments (0)