Hello - Let me introduce myself.

My name is Mark Richardson and I'm the latest Lean Facilitator at the Lean Healthcare Academy and I've been teaching Lean principles and facilitating Lean projects in the Chemical Industry for several years. I think Lean is great!

Lean is nothing new, it is a collection of best practices that have been developed over the past 200 years or so and has been utilised collectively by Toyota since the 1950's. This has enabled them to be one of the most successful and well respected manufacturing organisations in the World.

So what has all this to do with healthcare provision and more importantly what am I doing teaching Lean healthcare?

I can see that there is a lot of opportunity to use Lean principles in healthcare, with government led initiatives such as 18 weeks and Productive Ward and I see this as a great opportunity for myself to learn more and spread the Lean message further.

The beauty of Lean is that the principles can be applied in any organisation that delivers a product or service. It can help make things better, more efficient and improve quality. Also, what is important to me, is that improvements come from the teams and people that actually do the work. This makes Lean, so much more satisfying and workable than "top down" initiatives.

I'm looking forward to working with the NHS and public sector and I hope to replicate some of my success of working in industry. I have a lot to learn, especially in trying to understand the complex organisation, language and customs that the NHS in particular seems to have. Fortunately for me though, as a Lean Facilitator, highly motivated staff are the key. This gives an extremely good basis to work with.

I've really enjoyed my time so far at the Lean Healthcare Academy and I'm really looking forward to facilitating some projects.