Another article on the UK national health system using lean thinking: In the drive to save the NHS, I’m choosing a Toyota by Simon Caulkin:
So the lessons of Toyota come out rather differently from what you might expect. Large size is no barrier to efficiency - although smaller than the NHS, Toyota’s 264,000 employees make it large by any other standard. You don’t need a market to lower transaction costs, but the opposite: trust and cooperation, which also lifts morale by restoring control to the front line. (Toyota swaps largely anonymous leaders with as little fuss as changing a light bulb.) And far from being dependent on the profit motive, its method - flow - is as applicable to the public as the private sector. What’s not to like?
Related: Lean National Health System - Management Improvement History and Health Care - Epidemic of Diagnoses - Toyota Production System blog posts
June 13th, 2007 at 9:54 pm
Shows of support only are valuable if backed up with actual support…