The AME Chicago 2012 International Excellence Inside Conference offered a whirlwind of education sessions spanning five days. The Target publication staff broke into groups and attended as many sessions as possible. The following are notes from the sessions that Editor Rhonda Wickham attended.
On the Mend: The Lean Leadership and Management System in Healthcare
John Toussaint, Thedacare Center for Healthcare Value
John Toussaint, MD, discussed quality improvement at his hospital chain that followed a complete breakdown in which two wrong-sided surgeries happened on two successive days. He used the Shingo House as the model for his efforts in which you drive results through respect for people, scientific method to seek performance and clear purpose. Toussaint’s goal was to create a culture of continuous improvement by making improvements every day. He did that by creating a No Meeting Zone, a Vision Board and set the rule of Going After the Process, Not the Person. He also was recognized and inducted into the AME Hall of Fame. His book is titled On the Mend: Revolutionizing Health Care to Save Lives and Transform the Industry.
Do We Turn Back Now or Press On With Lean?
Karl Wadensten, VIBCO Vibrators
In answer to the question in the session’s title, Wadensten said you must press on. “If not, you face adversity and extinction,” he explained.
Karl Wadensten, president of VIBCO Vibrators, told the story of his company’s experience of near extinction. The defining moment came for the company when it had a crying customer. A customer had placed an order and needed it by Friday. VIBCO couldn’t deliver, promised it the next day, and still couldn’t deliver. Finally, the customer who needed the product was reduced to tears. Wadensten said his company was rife with power struggles and lack of communication. This forced him to go back to fundamentals, kaizen and the lean journey began. He said his team began to challenge their best efforts. Wadensten armed them with stopwatches and they began trimming off seconds. When asked what the first thing he did was when his company hit bottom, he said he fired his lean sensei.
Fixed Cycle Mixed Model Scheduling
Shahene Neshat, Buckeye Technologies
Shahene Neshat provided a session on how to calculate scheduling when you have numerous product families. Buckeye Technologies produces products from wood film for LCDs, napkins and tissue. He said they changed the schedule a lot to answer demand. Unfortunately, the company had too many slow-moving products and not enough fast-moving products. He showed how companies could measure Economic Order Quantity and improve on it by calculating for changing between product lines and the order in which the product should be made.
The Art of Effective Lean Communication
Jeanne Malnati, Lou Malnati’s Pizza
Jeanne Malnati is co-owner of Lou Malnati’s Pizza. She and her husband own 34 pizza shops in the Chicagoland area. Malnati detailed the breakdown at their Buffalo Grove pizza shop on opening day. She said the restaurant was over budget, managers were screaming, employees were crying and the senior manager walked out.
During her session, she described the company’s journey to lean communication. Now, it only has about 5 percent turnover, which is remarkable in the food industry. She described the Malnati Effect of how they transformed their teams. There are three top “ingredients.”
- Take Action — Create a regular set time for open expression to engage employees. Use the tool of SASHET to express what you are feeling (Sad, Angry, Scared, Happy, Excited, Tender). Acknowledge, identify and express what you are feeling. Be congruent.
- Embrace full responsibility — Do not use blame questions, embrace questions such as “What do I really want?” “How could I have shifted the way I handled that?” “Are others allies or enemies?” Own your humanness.
- Invite feedback as a gift. Learn about yourself with feedback, particularly about what you may not see in yourself.
