Michael Lombard
Director of Operational Excellence
KaiNexus customer Michael Lombard shares how his organization decided to use the Toyota Kata approach to continuous improvement.
In this video, Michael says...
When I came in as Director, we were kind of starting with a blank slate, so we had the opportunity to do some research. We started looking at some videos by John Shook of the Lean Enterprise Institute, and he talks about two pillars of continuous improvement: one being process improvement, the other being developing the capacity of your organization - giving them skills and competencies, and you want to be able to do both at the same time.
We came across the Toyota Kata method to continuous improvement, and it really does help fulfill both of these pillars at the same time. So we adopted that about a year ago and we've been experimenting just to see what works and what doesn't, and it works really well. Clinicians love it, it appeals to their action oriented nature, it allows them to just try things and learn from it and take steps forward.
Really, our next step with the Toyota Kata approach is going beyond our initial cadre of coaches, and infiltrating all levels of the organization. We're starting so see pretty good spread (we track that sort of thing - how many departments we're doing coaching in, how many departments we're going PDCA cycles in). But we really need to take it to that next level and start engaging everybody in the organization, from the clinical staff to the physicians, to the nonclinical staff and the leaders.
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