Introduction Lean was developed in the 1970s by TaiichiOhno in Toyota Production System (TPS) in Japan based on the teachings of Ford, Japanese experts and others. Nowadays, many healthcare organizations have adopted Lean into their healthcare systems. What is Lean? Lean in Healthcare is a step of management that focuses on the outlay of resources for everything and extirpating the wastes and redundancy. For example using a shorter period of time, the capital, inventory and the spacious of the area to boost the value from patient’s perspective. It is an improvement of a set of practices that is becoming more and more outstanding in terms of healthcare as well as in Japanese manufacturing organizations. “Value” is the key idea of Lean thinking. …show more content…
The purpose of VSM is to provide the means to visualize material, process and information flows, identify the wastes for elimination and provide a big picture perspective that helps focus on improving the whole process, not just optimizing bits and pieces. VSM is a tool for establishing a vision and implementation plan for a new business or product line. The processes of VSM are as followed: Firstly, define the Value Stream – identify the target product, product family or service. Secondly, map out the current state VSM and understand how the value flows. Thirdly, assess the current state VSM and identify the wastes, inefficiencies in flow and non-value add activities. Fourthly, create a future state VSM by adding a Lean flow – eliminating the wastes, and add “value”. Lastly, create an action plan and implement it. An example of a VSM can be seen in Figure 1.5 Figure 1.5: Example of a VSM Visual controls are tools that are used to ensure that a process is running smoothly. Information is displayed in a common area. The message is simple and easy to interpret. A “good” or “bad” condition is easy to see. An example of visual control can be seen in Figure 1.6. Figure 1.6: Example of Visual …show more content…
There are many ways to apply Lean in our lives or/and daily work. Some of the Lean tools mentioned in this report can be used to help in our lives. One of them will be visual controls. As we know, visual controls are to ensure that the processes are smooth-sailing and the message will be simple and straight forward to understand. By having these visual controls, we will be able label our things properly and in an organized manner. In this way, we will be able see the location of the items we need immediately instead of flipping through the cupboards or drawers to find them. Secondly, Lean is about eliminating waste. We have learnt how to identify the 7 wastes and eliminates them. In our daily lives, there are bound to be non-value added activities, and some of them may be bottleneck processes that slow down our everyday lives such as being late for an event (school, meet ups etc.). By identifying the wastes in our lives, we will have a lesser hiccups days and have smoother day with