The Lean Practice Coach

Maybe the fundamental practice of Lean is eliminating waste. Whether you recognize it or not, waste is a part of all processes. Where do you look? Where do you start? First you should recognize that only a small fraction of the total time and effort in any organization actually adds value for the patient. By clearly defining Value for a specific product or service from the patient’s perspective, all the non value activities – or waste – can be targeted for removal step by step.  For most practice activities only 10% of activities add value, 40% are necessary non-value adding activities and 50% add no value at all. Eliminating this waste is the greatest potential source of improvement in practice performance and patient service. Processes are reorganized so that the service flows through all the value adding steps without interruption, using the toolbox of lean techniques to successively remove the obstacles to flow. Activities are synchronized by pulling the product or service from upstream steps, just when required to meet the demand from the patient. Synchronizing flow starts with reorganizing individual process steps, but the gains become truly significant as all the steps link together. As this happens, more and more layers of waste become visible and the process continues towards the theoretical end point of perfection, where every asset and every action adds value for the patient. In this way, Lean Thinking represents a path of sustained performance improvement – and not a one off process improvement.