Lean Connections

This book has been on my office credenza for about seven months now and I’ve only read a few chapters, and skimmed a few others.  But as I become more and more involved in recruiting Lean executives for our Lean HealthCare industry clients, I felt that it made sense to spend some serious time with it, and actually finish the thing.  And it was well worth the effort because this is an amazing book. Then I  thought about writing my own book review, but where’s the added value in that when Dan Jones has done such a great job?  No, I’m a Lean Thinker, and that would be muda. So, here’s the forward written by my friend and Lean colleague, Dr. Dan T. Jones, of the Lean Enterprise Adademy in the UK:

Foreword by Daniel T. Jones

For the first time Making Hospitals Work provides a practical roadmap for healthcare leaders seeking to create truly lean hospitals. It outlines a clear framework for focusing improvement activities on the most important challenges facing each hospital.

It uses the same evidence based, scientific method as clinicians use to diagnose and treat medical problems to analyse and redesign the core emergency and elective patient journeys from arrival to discharge. It opens everyone’s eyes to the big win-win-win opportunities to eliminate unnecessary waiting time for patients, to synchronise activities so clinical staff can spend more time caring for patients and to free up capacity by reducing length of stay and cut the overtime and agency budget.

It also introduces the key new role of the value stream manager in gaining agreement on what needs to be done by whom in every department across the hospital. Every step described in Making Hospitals Work has been tried and tested in the three years’ action research that led to this workbook. It is the critical breakthrough to take the next steps on the lean healthcare journey.

And now that I’ve finished reading my copy, no, it’s not available as “loaner.”   Unless your name happens to be:  Delios Cosgrove, Joseph Swedish, Ronald R. Peterson, Mark Chassin, Gary Kaplan, or Denis A. Cortese.

And that’s the way I see it.   Adam Zak

I love my Amazon Kindle!  The technology, the design, the utility – this baby defines value for me, the customer.  And as great as this product is, I’m constantly on the look-out for hints and rumors that might provide some insight into what kind of awesome value I should be expecting from the next generation Kindle.  Hey, it’s in my blood – I’m a continuous improvment kind of guy.

Well, Fast Company’s blog this morning suggests “7 Ways Amazon Could Make the Next Kindle Awesome.”   Check it out.  My most desired feature would be the addition of a WiFi connection.  But of course, I’m still a pretty conventional thinker in terms of product design.  I bet the wizards of Kindle are already way ahead of me in coming up with some innovations that will deliver an even more amazing experience next time around!

And that’s the way I see it.  Adam Zak

PS.  I’m conducting an executive search for the person who will head up quality for the Kindle team.  Position title is Director, Product Quality.  If you know of a passionate Lean quality leader who might have an interest in exploring this role with me, please ask them to connect with me directly.