5S is a Lean manufacturing technique that addresses the organization of workspaces and processes for a safer and more efficient manufacturing facility. It is called 5S because the five steps in this Lean tool, sorting, setting, shining, standardizing, and sustaining, all start with the letter S in both English and Japanese.

While this post is geared toward manufacturers' needs, the 5S technique can be of great value in other environments, such as healthcare and office settings.

In automotive manufacturing, there are several things you can take for granted; unfortunately, some are unwelcome. The Six Big Losses are an uninvited guest in automotive manufacturing plants everywhere. They are the wastes that rob your organization of productivity, opportunity, time, and money, often under the radar.

To counter the Six Big Losses, you have to understand them. Knowing what to look for is crucial when trying to eliminate waste in any form, especially concerning the Six Big Losses. Bringing them into the open early can help limit their ability to impact your process and allow you to reduce or rid yourself of them completely.

Visual management tools surround us. Although they are so ubiquitous, we might not even think about them. When your car is about to run out of gas, a light will alert you to the problem. Your fitness app may even show you how close you are to your daily goal. Your brain can quickly process these visual clues and use the information to make decisions.

The Lean business approach takes advantage of this fact and leverages several powerful tools for management and improvement. You don’t have to be all in on Lean to take advantage of them. Any organization striving for continuous improvement can benefit.

While the quality of care and the patient experience has long been a top priority for healthcare organizations, increasingly they are turning to more formal, systematic approaches to continuous improvement. The goal is to ensure the best health outcomes while constraining costs and maximizing resources.

To achieve their ambitious goals, many hospitals and healthcare networks have implemented quality improvement software that supports improvement and strategy deployment techniques. This post is a resource for any healthcare leader considering adopting technology to streamline improvement efforts.

KaiNexus customers capture more daily improvements from staff, run more efficient strategic projects and events, coach more effectively, and streamline their improvement process. They engage everyone from the frontlines to the executive leaders in a thriving improvement culture to accelerate their rate of change—and it shows. The more engaged your employees are with improvement work, the more impact you’ll see.

With KaiNexus, organizations receive anywhere from 2-10x the number of ideas from their employees, and the average idea in KaiNexus is worth $15,000. Most customers also pay back their entire investment in KaiNexus by implementing one idea—now, who wouldn’t want that?

Let’s take a detailed look at how your organization can drive ROI with KaiNexus:

Across the world, healthcare leaders are increasingly striving to embed the principles of operational excellence and continuous improvement in their organizations. Empowering clinical and operational staff to deliver safe, high-quality, reliable care can significantly change results.

Achieving continuous improvement requires a systematic, sustainable approach to enhancing the quality of care and patients' health outcomes. Establishing a culture of constant improvement is not a quick fix but a journey that never ends. It requires ongoing commitment, investment, and persistence.

Here is the prerequisite for excellence.

I don't think I'm going out on a limb when I say that I believe we are all glad to have 2020 in the rearview mirror. While life isn't going back to normal any time soon, there is hope on the horizon. The COIVD-19 vaccine rollout is on the way, and our healthcare professionals have made great strides in treatment for the disease. 

Last year at about this time, we laid out some suggested continuous improvement resolutions for 2020. If the pandemic thwarted your plans and best intentions, give yourself a pass. No one knew what unprecedented challenges would arise.

But this is an excellent time to begin again. Even knowing that COVID-related disruptions will continue, it is still a healthy exercise to think about what your team can accomplish for continuous improvement in 2021. You'll have to consider your unique priorities, but we do have some suggestions for goals that will help your organization achieve excellence in the coming year.

On January 15, 1919, in the North End neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, a large storage tank owned by the Purity Brewing Company filed with 2.3 million gallons of molasses weighing approximately 12,000 tons burst. As a result, a wave of molasses rushed through the streets at an estimated 35 miles per hour, killing 21 people and injuring another 150. 

Like many other tragic disasters, this one was entirely preventable. As is often the case, no single decision of factor alone was responsible for the catastrophe that left Boston smelling like molasses on hot summer days for decades. 

A look at the circumstances leading up to the flood reveals that leaders at Purity Brewing Company made the same kinds of mistakes common in organizations today. 

Manufacturers of all kinds seek to achieve continuous quality improvement because it ensures the consistency of products delivered to customers and protects against the competition. It also paves the path to compliance with industry-specific standards. This is crucial in the automotive sector because defective vehicle parts may lead to expensive recalls or worse accidents that cost lives.

Fortunately, continuous improvement has a long history in automotive manufacturing. Many of the tools and techniques widely used by organizations worldwide were explicitly developed to ensure the quality and efficiency of automotive manufacturing. Toyota was a pioneer of many of the CQI approaches used today.

As you might imagine, the benefits of a successful continuous improvement program are significant, including:

Manufacturing organizations dedicated to continuous improvement look for opportunities to eliminate waste at every juncture. They may spend most of their time looking at core activities like production efficiency because improvements to essential processes result in significant gains.

However, there are many activities on the margins that can also be a significant source of waste. Improvements to these tasks might not yield monumental results, but the good news is they can be improved with just a little bit of attention and effort.

Is it possible that you might have opportunities for improvements hiding in plain sight? Here are a few places to look.