ABSTRACT
Lean Is More than Tools, but Tools Can Help Looking back to the Toyota triangle from Chapter 2, technical tools are just one component of the integrated system of Lean. Rather than documenting all of the details of how to implement these methods, this chapter focuses on some of the hospital-specific examples of the use of visual management, 5S, and kanban. We also focus on the management methods and philosophical concepts that are embedded in the effective use of these methods. „is chapter is by no means an all-inclusive list of tools, but these are some more commonly used in the early stages of hospital implementations. Many of the existing guidebooks or manuals for these methods, published for manufacturing, can be adapted for a hospital setting. In addition, healthcare-specific books are now being published on some of these methods, including 5S and kanban.1,2
Reducing Waste through Visual Management Another form of standardized work is the method of visual management. „e goal of visual management is to make waste, problems, and abnormal conditions readily apparent to employees and managers. Our aim should be to expose problems so they can be fixed, as opposed to the old approach of hiding problems to make things look good. Visual management is a mindset, more than a specific technology. Our goal, as managers, should be to ask ourselves how we can make our process more visual and our problems more apparent.
