Lean thinking in lean times

While some NHS Trusts have been “encouraging” employees to take unpaid leave as a way to reduce salary bills, there is a small fraction of the healthcare sector that has begun to discover more effective ways of reducing costs and finding efficiencies. By tapping into methods once considered an exclusive tool for the private sector, healthcare organisations under increasing pressure can quickly identify and deal with waste, and bring in new efficient processes and cost savings. Both hospitals and businesses have similar objectives. Both need to keep employees to run the organisation and both wish to prize themselves on great customer care. But as the past year has shown, when money becomes tight both seem to depend on reducing waste via employee redundancy or by cutting wages and bonuses. However, by implementing a set of “lean” principles, redundancy and wage cuts can be minimised or even become a thing of the past. By using lean processes as a way to reduce costs and eliminate waste, without affecting the job safety of the employees, businesses have found a new solution to an age old problem. Lean is a term increasingly talked about in almost every sector of industry throughout the world. Although it is held up by some as the most effective method to ensure a company is running at its most efficient, identifying huge cost savings as a result, many people within the healthcare sector still have very little idea about what is involved, where it originates from and best practice methods. It is considered something that is only suited for the private sector, and this idea has limited progression within the public sector. This article will highlight how lean approaches can help the healthcare sector inject much needed cash and increase efficiency in the areas that matter, by creating a more streamlined approach to the way the sector works.

 The lean concept

It is crucial to look back at the history of the lean concept and where it has come from in order for the healthcare sector to take advantage of the benefits it can offer. Lean can be traced back to the integrated socio-technical system developed by Toyota between 1948 and 1975. The “Toyota Production System” (TPS), as the term was coined for the technique, was designed to organise the manufacturing and logistics parts of the business for the Japanese automobile giant. Although recent events have somewhat soured Toyota’s reputation, the effectiveness of this system could not be denied and soon spread throughout the automobile manufacturing world with the likes of Ferrari, Porsche and Ford soon reaping the benefits of increased efficiencies and cost savings. Such success was not going to be ignored by other manufacturing industries for long and soon various forms of the original TPS were making their way around the globe. As a result, lean can be found at the heart of every manufacturing process and the idea has seeped into the business world.