2-Day Workshop
June 7th - 8th
8:00 AM - 4:00 PM
Price: $1200

Instructors:
Mark Graban

This two-day workshop is designed for individuals and teams that want to gain a better understanding of the components and underlying philosophy of lean, and how the elements and philosophy work together to create a lean healthcare organization. This course is designed specifically for healthcare settings, incorporating examples from many departments and patient pathways.

This course explains how the visible tools and methods of lean are based on a mindset, philosophy, and thought process. Special emphasis is placed on balancing Toyota's equally-important core principles of continuous improvement and "respect for people." Practical steps will be presented for starting with lean immediately upon returning to your healthcare organization, as well as a way of thinking through a longer-term lean strategy for your organization.

Benefits:
You will learn the key techniques, philosophies, and management system that comprise a lean approach in healthcare. Successful lean healthcare efforts result in measurable improvements in patient outcomes: improved quality, less harm due to preventable errors, better access, shorter waiting times, and better service. These patient benefits come from a joint focus on improving the work life for medical providers and hospital staff, improving processes to prevent systemic errors, reducing stress levels, and reducing waste so that hospital personnel can spend more time on and focus more on patient care. The hospital or healthcare organization benefits in a long-term perspective due to reduced capital costs and ongoing expenditures, growth opportunities created by freed-up capacity, and an improved reputation that results from better quality and service.

2-Day Workshop
June 7th - 8th
8:00 AM - 4:00 PM
Price: $1200

Instructor:
Tracey Richardson

The purpose of this workshop is to explore the lessons and insights of Managing to Learn from four perspectives.

First participants will explore the requirements of sound A3 thinking and management by following the stages of learning illustrated in Managing To Learn (MTL). MTL describes how a young manager learns to handle a significant problem-solving responsibility by creating an A3 that earns him the authority to address the problem in the ways he proposes. This occurs as he is coached on his problem solving and A3 thinking by his boss and mentor. He steadily uses the knowledge he is learning to revise his initial "jump-to-a-solution" A3 into an effective PDCA story. Participants will examine how the A3 changes with each revision, what the young manager has learned about A3 thinking, the A3 process that he applies in each revision, and what the course of his development indicates about the deep problem-solving focus that characterizes lean thinking.

Second, participants will have the opportunity to develop their own eyes and ears to recognize effective A3 stories. They will describe the problem-solving thinking that is required in each section of the A3 for the PDCA story it tells to be effective. Participants will read several A3s and discuss how they would coach the authors to improve them. They will then be given final versions of the A3s and asked to determine if they are more effective and why they are more effective than the originals.

Third, participants will create the Title, Background, Current Situation, Goal, Analysis, and Recommendations sections of an A3 for a problem-solving responsibility in their own work. Participants are asked to bring real A3s they are already working on for this exercise, or they may begin a new one during the class. They will work in small groups to read, discuss, and evaluate each other's A3s. They will coach each other as authors of their respective A3s, offering guidance to consider ways their PDCA stories could be improved.

Fourth, participants will learn various forms and uses of the A3 format. Examples from Managing to Learn will be highlighted, along with others. Topics that will be examined include:

• Basic types of A3 stories and how the format differs for each
• Role that A3 plays in the nemawashi process for gaining alignment with the stakeholders in a problem situation and seeking their agreement to proceed with the countermeasures or improvements being proposed
• Ways that A3 functions as a change management tool, a general management tool, a human development tool, and a knowledge sharing tool

Note: each participant will receive a copy of Managing to Learn.

Benefits
Through instruction, small group discussions and exercises, the workshop participants will:

• Learn the basic formats of A3s and uses of the A3 as a management process
• Gain experience in the three basic roles of the A3 process
• Writing an A3 (Author/Owner)
• Reading A3s (Responder)
• Coaching others about their own A3s (Coach)

1-Day Workshop
June 7th
8:00 AM - 4:00 PM
Price: $600

Instructor:
Tom Shuker

This interactive workshop demonstrates how to apply lean principles and value-stream mapping, a fundamental and critical tool, to accomplish what many healthcare organizations find difficult to do: make fundamental improvements in their clinical/administrative processes. You will see how the key elements of lean thinking and value-stream mapping apply to the primary and secondary processes of healthcare organizations, such as emergency medical care, pharmacy, diagnostic procedures (lab and radiology), sterile processing, case management and patient registration, discharge, records and billing. By learning to identify key processes to tackle, draw an accurate current-state map of each process, apply lean principles to envision a leaner future-state for each process, and implement the future-state in a way that can be sustained, you will develop a methodology that leads to improved outcomes and true continuous improvement.

Benefits
Through instruction, discussions, group activities, and hands-on exercises, you will learn how to:

• Identify a clinical/administrative process for improvement
• See the entire value stream
• Map the value stream to identify value and improve performance
• Redesign the value stream for improved cost, service, quality and safety
• Create simple lean metrics to understand and manage the performance of the value stream
• Connect improved organizational communication with desired financial and clinical outcomes
• Improve response and service to patients and other customers

1-Day Workshop
June 7th
8:00 AM - 4:00 PM
Price: $600

Instructor:
Joe Murli

This one-day version of our workshop 'Supporting Leader Standard Work with Visual Management Tools' focuses on the development of a visual management system in the healthcare environment.

While Lean is a rapidly growing phenomenon in healthcare, many are quickly finding that the issue of sustainable gains is problematic. Almost everyone has a story to tell about improvements that were made and over time fell into disuse. Sometimes quality, efficiency, and patient care are adversely affected in the long run by half-implemented or drifting processes.

This course provides you with the knowledge necessary to make sure that improvements are sustained and continuously improved upon over time. 

Creating a visual management system in clinical settings is challenging as overworked staff struggle to keep up with basic demands, and patient confidentiality requirements make visual control of information more complex.  However it is absolutely vital to visually identify abnormalities in patient wait times, scheduling anomalies, supplies and equipment availability, or simply assuring that patients don't get lost in the bureaucratic and physical maze that characterize many hospitals.

Taking a systems thinking approach to visual management and integrating this with management standard work leads to improving patient care while also helping the providers maintain a good work/life balance. The continual elimination of waste in the system is key to reducing workload while improving care quality and service to the patient. Integrating visual process adherence with visual process performance and management standard work keeps the organization focused on finding better ways to provide care.

In this course you will learn how to create a cohesive visual management system for clinical settings that provides a complete picture of where abnormalities exist in your value stream. Instead of implementing individual tools, a simplified visual environment is developed and used as part of a lean management system.

Benefits
Upon attending this workshop, you will be able to:

• Effectively design a comprehensive visual management system for your clinical operation that has the proper level of detail to avoid "visual clutter"
• Implement the visual management tools effectively throughout the entire organization
• Develop the management model that supports lean concepts especially as it relates to developing everyone's ability to eliminate waste on a continual basis

1-Day Workshop
June 8th
8:00 AM - 4:00 PM
Price: $600

Instructor:
Joan Wellman

In this session, you will learn from the experiences of other hospitals, focusing on moving beyond lean tools and short-term projects and transitioning into a longer-term view of a lean management and lean leadership. This session will present a lean leadership model that will ensure that physicians, nurses, residents, administrators and hospital staff are actively engaged in a culture of continuous improvement, one that focuses on patients and families. This culture and a different management system can lead to advances in patient safety, patient flow, and cost. A long-term view is required to truly transform a healthcare organization into a lean organization.

Benefits
In this workshop, you will learn how to:

• Engage other senior administrative and clinical leaders in modeling and demonstrating lean leadership characteristics and behaviors
• Identify and eliminate barriers to systemic organizational culture change
• Include lean thinking and design into facilities and capital planning
• Create a 3-to-5 year master plan for lean transformation in your healthcare organization

1-Day Workshop
June 8th
8:00 AM - 4:00 PM
Price: $600

Instructor:
John Grout

The lean methodology and management system provides a number of approaches for improving quality and patient safety in very practical ways. One of these lean quality methods is called mistake-proofing, sometimes called "poka-yoke."  In healthcare, this is often called a "forcing function."

Mistake-proofing is born of common sense, simplicity, and detailed process knowledge, but combines nicely with the findings of cognitive psychology and human factors engineering.  It is an ideal tool to improve the recommended actions that come out of teams doing pro-active risk assessment, FMEA or root cause analysis.

The vocabulary and approaches included in this seminar will provide attendees with the skills and knowledge to permanently change processes in ways that reduce human errors and lead to more precise actions and outcomes.  If you are using double and triple checks in your process and still have errors... If you depend on the vigilance of workers to stop errors... this workshop is for you.

At the end of this workshop, you will be able to:

• Explain how mistake-proofing and other lean quality methods apply in healthcare and how that fits with existing patient safety initiatives
• Use benign failure design concepts to allow processes to stop when errors do occur
• Apply mistake proofing concepts to improving your own processes
• Use an A3 planning approach to design mistake proofing uses
• Create a plan of action for implementing lean quality methods in your organization

1-Day Workshop
June 8th
8:00 AM - 4:00 PM
Price: $600

Instructor:
David Verble

There is a growing concern these days about sustaining lean improvements after they are made. How to maintain the gains from those improvements and build on them is the burning question for many organizations and lean leaders. The fact that has been overlooked by many organizations is that while lean coordinators and facilitators and kaizen teams are invaluable resources for introducing and implementing lean tools, kaizen events, and value-stream mapping projects, it is the role of managers and executives to create an environment and the systems in which employees can and will take responsibility for the practices, behaviors, and thinking that achieve, sustain, and build on improvements made with lean. Drawing on observations, practices, and values from Toyota, this workshop will examine the role of managers and executives in the development of people and operations capable of successful lean performance.

This workshop will introduce participants to the concept of a supportive management environment for lean performance. Participants will explore the manger's role in people development and responsibilities in creating a learning environment. They will identify the perspectives, capabilities, and behaviors required by the role and examine organizational systems and practices that support managers in carrying out their role to develop and sustain capability for performance in a lean operation. Participants will also have the opportunity to assess how the culture and systems of their own organizations support the development of capability for successful lean operational and individual performance.

Benefits
Through a combination of observations, descriptions, examples, exercises and discussions participants will:

• Identify the type of management environment necessary for successful and sustained individual and operational performance
• Describe the role and behaviors of the manager that create and maintain a lean environment and contrast them to those that undermine it
• Consider the functions of the lean tools in supporting successful performance
• Assess the extent to which the management environment in their own company or organization supports lean
• Identify and prioritize the core competencies needed by people working in a lean operation
• Describe their own roles and problem solving responsibilities in the context of the strategic priorities of their organizations
• Recognize the management behaviors that take away responsibility and hinder employee thinking and initiative
• Consider the difference between On-the-Job Training and Development and classroom education and recognize the function of each in a lean context
• Identify and assess the capabilities they need to develop to perform successfully in their own current roles and identify OJD responsibilities and assignments that could help them develop those capabilities
• Reflect on recent attempts to coach a direct report or mentor a co-worker and identify ways their actions and assumptions either supported or hindered the development of the other person