Kaizen is a Japanese philosophy introduced after the Second World War, and spearheaded by Toyota. It’s roughly translated as “continuous improvement”. The concept of kaizen is that you make changes to your processes in small, achievable steps. Rather than look at business performance every year, as is traditional, kaizen means looking at it on a continuous basis.

The Lean approach to business management has its roots in manufacturing, but today it is widely used in hospitals and other healthcare organizations. The ideas of waste reduction and process controls are attractive, but some leaders implementing Lean healthcare run into some pretty serious challenges. Here are a few of the most common mistakes. MISTAKE 1: UNDERESTIMATING RESOURCE REQUIREMENTS

What is Standardized Work? Standard work is an important component of the Lean methodology, forming the baseline for continuous improvement through the documentation of current best practices. Each time the standard is improved, the new standard becomes the basis for future improvements. It is important for standard work to be documented and to show Clear, appropriately detailed, outlines

A3 problem solving is quite similar to other problem solving approaches which mirror Deming’s Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle. The comparison between A3 problem solving and PDCA is depicted in Table 1. Using a very simple approach, A3 problem solving is composed of the following seven steps shown below. Step 1: Background In this step, you make the

… the front line of your business. Every day, front-line employees see many problems and opportunities that their managers do not. They have plenty of ideas to improve productivity and customer service, to offer new or better products or services, or to enhance their organizations in other ways. But their organizations usually do better at

Welcome to 2018!! It is our tradition to contemplate the year completed and resolve to make changes in the new year. After all, what better time to implement the desired changes in your life? However, the chance is your list will turn out to be a list of last year’s failures. We’ve all been there.