Organization Lean (lean) is the name given to systems derived from Toyota Production System – TPS. He started in the automobile sector at Toyota and extended to many other activities, including the organization of hospitals, as described in the book “Management on the Mend: The healthcare executive guide to save lives and transform the industry “- Dr. John Toussaint, John and Emily Adams.
O Lean it is a vision and a philosophy and not just a set of tools, and anyone who uses it just as a tool will not get the desired results. THE Lean or TPS is a culture and requires persistent work with surprising results only in the medium term.
O purpose of Lean is to identify what does not add value to the customer and drastically reduce it and thus almost eliminate waste. It is impossible to achieve this result without involving everyone stakeholders and leaders and make them participate in a powerful vision that reaches all processes.
Some tools are known on the market, such as Just in Time, Kan Ban and 5S but this does not mean Culture Lean. The identification of waste, called Mudas, Mura and Muri, is found in excess or defective production, unnecessary movements, transfers of people, waiting times, lack of synchronism, flow with high lows, losses or deterioration of material.
The principles of Lean, start with a Long-term systemic vision and relativizing the value of a short-term or immediate vision, with face-to-face participation from leaders (genchi genbutsu) and scientific resolution with PDCA and other methodologies. Instead of solving the effects of the problem, for example, increasing inventory, they try to make the problem surface and everyone can deal with the problem of loss of value, (root cause) immediately.
This system is already being used in the health sector and the book mentioned above contains examples and cases. This work philosophy is considered “organic” as it integrates processes, people and problem-solving methodologies.
The processes are adapted to a “Pull”, that is, take it from the end of the processes and not push it, modifying its size and function, creating a continuous and preferably balanced flow, with few oscillations.
The tools of Lean are numerous, but one should not confuse the Culture Lean with a group of tools.
Since 1950, Toyota has been applying this philosophy, which spread from the factory floor to the entire company and allowed it to convert a small company, with few resources, on the verge of bankruptcy, in a country devastated by war and with little demand, into a global leader in production. of cars.
Today 69% of manufacturing companies in the world use the system Lean and Toyota has openly trained many of its competitors to improve quality and yield. Personally, I implemented the first Toyota system in 1985 with satisfactory results, but I recognize that today the system is much more complete and comprehensive, and can be implemented in any sector of a company.
It is always very important to analyze what value is passed on to the customer and what is not. In addition to reducing waste and increasing quality and profit, this modality frees up investments in processes that do not add value to other production sectors. The health system, with the urgency of reducing waste, has a lot to gain from this and we already have abundant examples to report.
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