Our Lean Journey Continues and What A Year It's Been!

Session
Lean Six Sigma

Authors
Jenny Button
Project Manager III
Kaiser Permanente - San diego

Lorna Curtis
Assistant Administrator
Finance
Kaiser Permanente - San Diego

Description
With a year of Lean efforts under our (green) belts, the buzz about Lean has grown, and were now faced with the fortunate task of supporting increased project requests and training. Well explain our approach to meet this demand, and review results of our efforts, lessons learned and success factors.

Abstract
In 2007, Kaiser Permanente San Diego began a "ground up" effort to use Lean methodologies to improve operations. With strong support from San Diegos financial leader, a number of existing staff members were trained in Lean techniques, and the use of Lean to make positive change began. We presented our approach and preliminary work at the 2008 SHS conference. Success from our projects combined with a stronger understanding of the benefits of using a Lean approach as well as the need to tackle key cost drivers, has driven stronger leadership support and the initiation of broader based projects. This led also to a request to spread Lean (and other operational improvement approaches) throughout our local organization from the leadership level to front line staff. The ability to support this increased need without adding resources could only be accomplished by tapping into existing project management and training resources throughout our departments. We will cover the approach we developed to do just that. This will not be simply a conceptual overview - we will include tangibles examples of project and other efforts, reviewing results and specific learnings and success factors.