A drop in the bucket may not save the world, but what if it saved a life, is it worth the effort?
Fellow lean practitioners, as the recent Coronavirus outbreak is showing us, there is a tremendous gap between current situation and the preparedness state that we would like to be at. On this first week of March 2020, we don’t know if this will last just a few more weeks or months.
We pray that competent professionals somewhere around the world will find a breakthrough vaccine or other solutions.
While a solution is not here yet, we are getting ready with prevention or supplies or raising awareness wherever we interact.
However, the lean community has an added capability perfect for times like this.
A few places where we could be instrumental:
- Can we volunteer to help aid companies increase throughput and production capacity?
- Can we volunteer to help those hospitals create the flow in the triage of patients to be tested and/or admitted?
- Can we volunteer to teach error proofing techniques so there is no infected patients being discharged by mistake?
- Can we volunteer to speed up lines and lower crowds by Kaizening their processes?
- Can we volunteer to teach root cause analysis, standardized work, yokoten (lateral deployment) and so many concepts that can slow down the outbreak?
The chain of organizations that can benefit from lean is long and is suffering from lack of production capacity (from test kits to respirators), discharging and admission glitches (infected patients dismissed too soon), lengthy approval processes and deficient triage (at exam labs or at hospitals).
How can we share ideas of how to support locally? We can start brainstorming this in our lean community, today. Maybe it is a visual awareness poster you can share at your kids’ school, maybe it is some kaizens you can suggest at your local clinic, maybe a friend knows a diagnostics lab with capacity challenges. Maybe it is that hospital that you have to fill out the same form three times to get admitted. How can we put ideas into practice?
How would you apply lean techniques to slow down the outbreak?
Operational Executive specializing in hotel, attractions, and zoological operational efficiency. Customer Service expert and coach helping to create exceptional and memorable service interactions
4yExcellent thoughts Sammy!
25+ years in CI, Co-Author "The Problem-Solver's Toolkit"; Co-Founder of the Just-in-Time Cafe, Instructor for UC San Diego Green Belt, Parody Music Video Creator and a Process Improvement ZEALOT!
4yThanks for rallying Lean folks together Sammy! If you participate in any volunteer capacity in San Diego give me call. I’d love to pitch in too.
I am encouraged by the feedback and goodwill of this group. I believe that the power of this and other social media is precisely in sharing ideas with more people and faster, so I’ll take the liberty to turn public some of the communication that came to me verbally or as private messages: “we will translate World Health Organization info and pamphlets for our community who can’t access online information.” “..then showed proper hygiene videos to my kids… ..other parents started doing the same.” “…felt inspired to draw a couple of cartoons to raise awareness.” “I put some improvements in the suggestion box at my hospital.” I’m trying to get help from an epidemics authority who knows where the insuficiencies are (supplies, equipment capacity, manpower, scheduling, etc..). The goal is to open a focused directory of places that could benefit from better processes in this critical time. I trust most of us in this network are process improvement specialists. Invariably these places are suffering coincidentally from lack of capacity in their processes. Many of us are now finding a rare opportunity (or being forced) to stay local or to slow down. In some specific industries and sectors it is exactly the opposite that is taking place. If you are on the side where life is bringing you some extra downtime and you you would like to donate and improve one process outside your normal work, please share your willingness. If you know places that can use optimization expertise (regardless of what you call it, I call it Kaizen), please share your information. With a directory of needy organizations and connections, it will be possible for us to locate and contact a place that needs to increase capacity. It is a race where a platoon of compassionate practitioners must outrun a microscopic enemy.
Author | Speaker | Co-Founder of Just-in-Time Café | Problem-Solving Ambassador
4yNice Sammy--thanks for starting the conversation!
Great ideas Sammy!