At the 2021 Virtual Indiana Lean Healthcare Summit, several incredible Lean leaders shared their experience fostering a state of healthcare excellence within their organizations. This blog post is a recap of one speaker's presentation, Deanna R Willis MD MBA FAAFP FNAP, Otis R Bowen Professor of Family Medicine at Indiana University, in which she discussed “Engaging Physicians in Lean.”

The continuous improvement methodology of Kaizen was once closely associated with industrial and automotive manufacturing. That’s because the Kaizen philosophy originated in the Japanese auto industry and was then later adopted by technology manufacturers like GE and Motorola.

But if you’ve been hearing about Kaizen project management in other sectors over the last few years, you are not alone.

The principles of Kaizen can lead to continuous improvement in almost every industry. The approach is now widespread in healthcare, construction, software development, education, logistics, and everything in between.

You won’t learn everything about Kaizen in any one blog post, but we can lay out the fundamentals of Kaizen project management.

I’ve had the benefit of learning, practicing, and teaching continuous improvement for the better part of almost twenty years. I have seen, first-hand, the transformational power of how continuous improvement can radically change people’s lives at work in a way that benefits everyone: the customer, the employee, and the organization. I am fortunate to have found a career where I can help people and teams be the best versions of themselves.

We had the pleasure of presenting a webinar hosted by Chad Westbrook, a manufacturing engineering manager and AGCO production system manager at AGCO Corporation. AGCO is a full-line manufacturer of agricultural equipment. The company makes everything, including tractors, tillers, sprayers, bailers, and other equipment. Chad joined our own Mark Graban to discuss a different way of thinking about problem-solving. This post is a recap of the presentation - watch the full thing for all the details!

A Structured Approach to Problem-Solving

Presented by Chad Westbrook, AGCO

In this webinar, you'll learn a structured approach to problem-solving using the following tools:

• 5G – A tool used to describe a loss phenomenon
• 5W1H – An approach to the revised phenomenon
• 4M1D – Defining the contributing factors to the revised phenomenon
• 4M1D Confirmation – Validating the contributing factors
• 5 Why’s – Root cause and effective countermeasures
  
  

Are you struggling to drive a continuous improvement culture in your organization?

Do you need to revive a CI culture that has lost momentum? 

If you’re like so many others, it can be difficult to know which questions to ask, and where to start.

Jeff Roussel, chief revenue officer of KaiNexus and a true continuous improvement leader and believer, recently joined Allison Greco, founder of Continuous Improvement International, to talk about how you can build a continuous improvement culture. To watch a full recap, click here.

The world’s most successful organizations are relentless in their quest for flawless processes and perfect execution. The ability to reliably produce quality outcomes with minimal waste is elusive but achievable with the right leadership and attention. That’s why many organizations turn to proven process improvement methodologies and techniques.

Although the Lean quality improvement methodology was initially developed to improve the quality and productivity of automotive factories, it has been used with great success in industries and settings of all types, including software development, government, retail, and other service settings.

Healthcare organizations, in particular, have found that the approach can be used to reduce costs and improve quality of care, patient safety, and satisfaction at the same time.