Lean for services?

[ifin]

I'm a mfg engineer that has had 4 years experience in process improvement, mapping and 5S etc in a sheet metal facility. I would really like toapply these tools to improve services.

Anyone here doing anything like that?. Any ideas how I can get into similar fields?.

 

[tygerdawg]

It appears that this has been identified as an area to which Lean & 6S methods could be applied. There's a bit of literature on the subject, consultant houses and simulation packages address Health Care and other fields.

I think the challenge will be just like in manufacturing, though. Generally I have found that management is very reluctanct to have some outsider tell them that what they are doing can be improved.

My wife recently started at a hospital lab that went through a "Lean Implementation" directed by some non-technical hospital administrator. Listening to her rants at the end of the day, it has become very clear what the situation is. They did not analyze the lab workload properly. The administrator listened to the Blue Sky scenario from Big Company Equipment Salesman about how their big machine would reduce head count and labor costs. I suspect he paid too much attention to the "Labor Costs" cell on the MSExcel spreadsheet and too little attention to the performance indices. While the lab needed a labor-intensive but flexible "job shop" production operation, he purchased a machine that only works well in a high-volume operation. It's a disaster that can only be solved by some high level guy in the hospital administration admitting he screwed up and losing his job. In the meantime, the lab performance and morale is going down the toilet.

Is there a need for Lean & 6S in services? Oh, yeah. How good of a salesman are you?

TygerDawg
Blue Technik LLC
Virtuoso Robotics Engineering

http://www.bluetechnik.com

 

[ifin]

Tygerdawg - you are right too often lean is implemented without focusing on the people giving it a bad name, but I feel that the values and skill sets I have to offer are slightly different - I think I'm a good salesman (the good kind).

It seems that other than manufacturing only healthcare industry seems to be proactive about trying to implement lean. But the then again it is sad that most times when we talk about it people always have horrifying experiences like the one at your spouse's work.

 

[RemoteControlFF]

I'm reading "Lean Six Sigma for Service" right now, it gives a pretty good overview of these methods applied to service applications, though I disagree with the author's contention that Lean is only about "speed" and 6S is only about "reducing errors".

My girlfriend's hospital is just starting a lean training program - she is one of the two people in the group of 24 who is under 45... everyone is afraid for their jobs and scared of change, and their trainer keeps talking about factories and nursing to a bunch of lab techs and administrators. Not that effective in my opinion.

Only about 1% of gross is profits at most hospitals - and as more and more people demand more and more tests, additional opinions and specialist visits than they have in the past costs will only go up.

One of our sister companies (Mechanical Contractor) is very much into Lean, but like anything change is an uphill battle.

Good luck.

 

[jpankask]

With 4 years experience as a manufacturing engineer doing that stuff, your best bet is probably to hook up with a consulting company offering those services. One that I know of is Pinnacle Partners, Inc. (

http://www.pinnaclepartnersinc.com/).

This is the company that put on my six sigma training and seemed to do good business. They definitely did know process improvement.

I worked for 5 years as a manufacturing and quality engineer in charge of process improvement. I think it would take you a long time to build up a customer base that could support you as a new business with only 4 years experience in the field. There are a lot of manufacturing companies who pursue process improvement, not all stick with it and not all are successful.

 

[ifin]

jpankask - you are right it would take a long time to build a customer base, frankly I'm looking for a career improvement as well, so I was wondering if there were other industries/companies that encouraged lean like healthcare that maybe needed people with process improvement experience?

 

[jpankask]

Ah, sorry I misunderstood. In my experience, your background will help you do your job better anywhere. Unfortunately, those skills alone are not likely to get you another job in a new industry. The concepts behind process improvement are very important in every industry but what they call it (i.e. the buzzwords), if they call it anything, vary greatly. So you will need to concentrate on those basic principles and explain how you can use that to better a company, within the bounds of the position they hire you for. It might be a tough sell, depending on who you are talking to. Good luck!

 

[ifin]

for the past few days I have tried looking for positions like this under healthcare jobs, but I haven't had much success.
Maybe I should look to work with consulting companies that do similar work?, I'm also looking at some lean healthcare forums? any other suggestions anyone?.