I have had a really busy but enjoyable week this week.

Bradford Residential Care Homes

I want to say a really big well done to the guys from Bradford Council. Mark Richardson (the new Lean Facilitator at LHA) and I facilitated a Lean Healthcare Overview session with the team. Even though it was the first time that most of the guys had come across Lean it was great to see that they picked up the basic concepts very quickly. What was even more pleasing was that the guys really got to grips with the concept of waste.

Yes it is really unfortunate that waste in any process cannot be seen waving a big red flag with the words ‘hello I'm here & I'm waste!' emblazoned all over it. Wouldn't it be nice though! What makes matters worse is that waste can be ambiguous, can mutate and generally hides stealth like unseen amongst other elements of the process. In fact I think that it is fair to say that sometimes waste can be chameleon like adapting to its surroundings to survive. Let me explain. Peter Senge developed a management science known as Systems Thinking which looks at a given process from a holistic or systems perspective.

A good example of this is when you take a shower at a hotel using an unfamiliar shower. When you first step in you turn the controls on full because you know that initially the water will be cold. After a moment or two the water coming out of the shower is red hot so again you turn the controls over to cold. Eventually through fine tuning you get the temperature just right. Senge argues that this example can be seen in businesses where knee jerk decisions to solve ‘big problems' are made at too local a level and without due consideration of the impact to the overall system. An example that I like to use is that of dropping a pebble into a still lake. In business the pebble is the decision and the ripples are the impact of that decision. Senge would argue that if you don't stop to consider the effect of the ripples you create an imbalance in the overall system. The ripples can cause waste to mutate i.e. turn from transportation to waiting and so on. At the end of the day it is still waste.

Bradford Hospitals

I would also like to say a big hello to all the Nurses and Matrons (almost 50 of them) who attended a 2 hour Lean Healthcare Overview session that I facilitated. This was definitely a lively group who were very open and generated a lot of good discussion. I hope that you guys don't stop your journey with Lean there - I would recommend the 1 day Process Flow Analysis training that we hold at Airedale as an excellent next step. PFA is an incredibly effective method of unearthing waste as it really puts any process under the microscope to identify any waste.

Huddersfield Royal Infimary - Pharmacy

My last comments are with the Pharmacy guys at Huddersfield Royal Infirmary. Special thanks are for Gerard (Deputy Director of Pharmacy) and for Nicky (Pharmacy Team Leader) who took time out of their busy diaries to host me for a diagnostic review of their area. Incredibly whilst 6S, Waste and Visual Management were high on the agenda we actually started to discuss and create Standard Work Charts (a tool used in Work Area Design) to look at improving patients' experience.

This weeks Unsung Lean Hero Award goes to Gerard for truly buying into people empowerment.  Gerard has organised a 6S event in a defined area of Pharmacy that is to be led and undertaken by the guys who work at HRI. Learn by doing - an excellent ethos.......