Toyota Healthcare: 7+1 Type Of Waste

Book excerpt: Lean healthcare is the practise of applying "lean" concepts to the healthcare industry in order to reduce waste, enhance patient outcomes, and lower costs. All employees of the firm, from clinicians to operations and administrative personnel, continuously work to identify areas of waste and eliminate anything that does not create value for patients using lean concepts in healthcare. In general, lean thinking is a set of concepts, strategies, principles, values and tools used to create and deliver the most value from the customer perspective while consuming the fewest resources and fully utilizing the knowledge and skills of people performing the work. If you visit Toyota assembly plants you can see how Toyota has put all the systems and supports staff in place to ensure that the production team members on the assembly line always have the parts and the necessary tools, they need to do their jobs. Trucks are not as important as patients, but Toyota arguably puts far more effort into supporting their front-line staff than many hospitals do. Toyota allows the team members to focus on their work and the truck in front of them, leading to better results and satisfaction for all.