Thursday, September 22, 2011
Emerging Signs of Kanban at Scale in Healthcare
Yesterday, I visited a large health services organization that is in the early stages of implementing kanban. Founded in Seattle in 1947, Group Health Cooperative provides health coverage and care, and with approx.10,000 staff, is one of the largest private employers in the state of Washington. It is a fine example of a large, long-established organization that has turned to kanban as an instrument for improving performance.
GHC management has a long history of being at the forefront in implementing systems and technology to refine its services. About ten years ago it became one of the first large health services organizations in the country to transfer all of its patient records from paper to digital. And now, they are embracing Lean concepts in knowledge work to improve productivity.
The healthcare giant’s “Core Operations” team is leading the initial kanban effort, using it for production maintenance. This is a classic area for introducing kanban into an organization - making small incremental improvements is well-suited for sustainment work. I particularly enjoy how this kanban board is cross-functional and includes “SysAdmin” tasks.
Kanban is spreading through the organization. A development team is now adding kanban practices to its current process to improve visibility. The objective is to better understand when work is truly ready to be pulled to avoid the thrashing that has been flattening out their burndown charts. Making the work visible is helping them see the actual state of their progress and is revealing crucial work that was previously unplanned.
This large company appears to be on course for ongoing improvement by gradually implementing changes to their kanban system design. It was a pleasure to watch their kanban-in-action, and I’m delighted that we have yet another case study from a large organization to add to our training material – just in time for the next Kanban for IT Services & Operations class.
