What is a lean assessment?
For over 20 years, lean assessments have been applied to healthcare settings with the goal of improving lab processes.The goal is not to identify flaws but to focus on areas of improvement.
Your specific laboratory goals:
Optimize labour resources to allow for increased throughput
Improve staff efficiency, optimize staffing workload and increase staff satisfaction
Improve turnaround time from the point of collection to reported result
Improve specimen quality, reduce rework and eliminate errors and erroneous processes
How does a lab lean assessment work?
Starting a lean journey in any department can be daunting. It is critical to have alignment across the team regarding areas of improvement.
The journey toward lean assessment
| Step | 1 | Awareness | Understanding and agreeing to identify key processes to find the best path forward |
| 2 | Observe | Engaging with us to observe, map out and analyze a process of interest to create change | |
| 3 | Design | Designing options to consider, including new technologies or workflow variations | |
| 4 | Collaborate | Collaborating with lab stakeholders to determine the best fit and implementation of a plan | |
| 5 | Sustain | Validating new processes workflow to include monitoring tools. Sustainable processes are key to success |
Diagram showing technician movement in the lab before the lean assessment was done
Diagram showing technician movement in the lab after the lean assessment was done and changes implemented. 
