Reducing Door-to-Needle Times Using Toyota’s Lean Manufacturing Principles and Value Stream Analysis

Lean manufacturing: costing the value stream

The term “lean manufacturing”, (Womack et al., 1990), refers to the generalization of the Toyota Production system (TPS), also called Just-in-Time (JIT). One feature of such system is the reduction of costs through elimination of waste (Sugimori et al., 1977). Waste or muda (in Japanese) is anything that does not add value to a product. Elimination of muda is done by means of continuous improve...

Improving Wait Times to Care for Individuals with Multimorbidities and Complex Conditions Using Value Stream Mapping

Background Recognizing the significant impact of wait times for care for individuals with complex chronic conditions, we applied a LEAN methodology, namely – an adaptation of Value Stream Mapping (VSM) to meet the needs of people with multiple chronic conditions and to improve wait times without additional resources or funding.   Methods Over an 18-month time period, staff applied a patient-cen...

Implementation of a Lean Model for Carrying out Value Stream Mapping in a Manufacturing Industry

Value Stream Mapping technique involves flowcharting the steps, activities, material flows, communications, and other process elements that are involved with a process or transformation. In this respect, Value stream mapping helps an organization to identify the non-value-adding elements in a targeted process and brings a product or a group of products that use the same resources through the ma...

Door-to-Needle Times: Let's Not Leave Smaller Hospitals Behind.

Improving Door-to-Needle Times for Acute Ischemic Stroke

Faster treatment with intravenous alteplase (tissue-type plasminogen activator) results in better outcomes. Although the benchmark door-to-needle time (DTN) has been set at 60 minutes, many centers have been able to exceed this benchmark with median times from 20 to 51 minutes. These local efforts have been supported by national and international efforts to reduce DTN time. For example, the Ame...