ABSTRACT
Over the weekend, Nick studied the World-Class Manufacturing handout that Janice, the Lean consultant, had provided. One section titled Building a Lean Organization caught his attention. The section explained that building a Lean organization could be likened to building a house. The house depicted in the handout showed a multilevel foundation, six columns, three horizontal supporting elements spanning the six columns and supporting the roof, and of course the roof itself. Every part of the structure had a label representing a tool or concept of Lean. The house seemed tremendously complex. There was text below the house, which included many unfamiliar terms such as takt time, rightsizing, and curtain. The labels on the house included many Japanese words including jidoka, heijunka, poka-yoke, kaizen, and kanban, none of which had any meaning to Nick. It was no wonder that the staff at the hospital were so put off by all of these words. To make things even more confusing, there were many acronyms such as 5S, SMED, Total Preventive Maintenance (TPM), and Standard Work in Process (SWIP), which were totally foreign to him.
