Lean Healthcare v Lean Manufacturing

Having run major public programmes focused on delivering Lean improvements within manufacturing I became incredibly aware of the ability of Lean projects to go wrong or for even the successful projects to fail to embed themselves in the organisation and this led to in-depth research and analysis into the major causes of 'Lean Failure'.

Following my time with manufacturers, I spent a year working with the RAF delivering Lean and found that many of the same problems applied to them as well, and then around 18 months ago when I started working on delivering Lean into Heathcare I very quickly realised that many of the problems that prevented manufacturing programmes being successful were also clearly apparent within the NHS.

Research into the causes of Lean Burnout involving some 20 Trusts determined that the fit between the reasons for failure in manufacturing were exactly the same as those in Healthcare.

The other interesting fact that was noted about the causes of failure is that the vast majority of them were either due to a faulty implementation process or were visible at the start of the Lean project.

If you are interested in finding out more, I would love to see you at one of our workshops which can be found listed on our website www.amnis-uk.com. Alternatively, drop me a line and I will send you a short paper about the findings.