5. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
The findings above reflect a mixed approach to Lean
across the three Trusts. It could be argued that Pottery
has focused more on process improvements across
fewer areas or departments compared to the other two
Trusts. However, although the activity across Iron and
Ring was more apparent overall the findings indicate
that the focus of Lean appears to be focused on Rapid
Improvement Events (RIEs) and Projects which could
lead to ‘patchiness’ of activity with a range of actions
taking place within and between the divisions many
which were not recognised outside individual
departments. Although, in Iron and Ring there is at least
recognition on the impact of this for the future
development of Lean.
Considering the findings regarding conditions of
readiness. Lean principles can relate to organisational
readiness in terms of understanding both the external
and internal customer (value and value stream), having
a process view (flow), identification of capacity and
demand (pull) and, linking to strategy and engagement
of the staff (perusing perfection).
In Pottery customers were described as ‘should be’
patients but often identified as the commissioners with,
as in the other case studies, little reference to the
internal customer such as the surgeon, consultant or
nurse. The process was seen as the department/ward
process or a patient pathway. The levels of demand
and the relationship with capacity/ resources were
understood really only by diagnostics and, teamworking
had improved through the RIEs within particular areas.
For Iron again customers often seen as the
commissioners with the patient requirement not fully
defined with a focus on ‘how are we doing rather than
how do we improve.’ Again the process was mainly
seen as the department/ward process not as end-toend
process. There was a recognition that it is
important to understand demand and need to match
with capacity but information was still needed to
achieve this. Finally, there was a feeling that culture
was moving from fire fighting to more cause and effect
analysis, starting to move from financial focus to the
patient.
Finally, for Ring it was felt that there was little change in
the view of the patient as a customer. There was a
better understanding of process where process
mapping had been undertaken. As with Iron a
recognition of the importance to understand demand
and need to match with capacity and, examples of
changes in behaviour e.g. more able to challenge staff,
more openly discuss and carry out service
improvement.
For sustainability there was hope across all the Trusts
that Lean would be sustained along with recognition
that some things needed to be done differently in order
to support sustainability including greater engagement
of the staff through more training, better communication
as well as senior management and leadership
commitment. A quote from Iron summarises many of
views related to sustainability particularly for Iron and
Ring “What is needed is more significant delivery
change and a step change in service improvement. This
will be more sustained than one off minor department
improvements e.g. tidying of areas, undertaking 5S
events. There is a real concern that these departments
will drift back to where they were before”
Therefore, if we consider the propositions set out in the
methodology the third one stated that there is not
always a direct relationship between the approach
taken, the conditions of readiness and the service
improvement activity in the organisation. The findings
from this research and analysis would suggest that this
is not true. Within Pottery focused activity was taking
place where although it was having some level of
impact the understanding and development of the
conditions of readiness were still low and a lot of activity
would be needed to support future sustainability of Lean
within the organisation.
Pottery also helps to support the first proposition in that
if the approach to Lean is process improvement and
few conditions of readiness are present then it will
difficult to support and sustain service improvement
within the organisation.
In terms of the second proposition which states if the
approach to Lean is continuous improvement and many
of conditions of readiness are present or being
developed then it is possible to support and sustain
service improvement within the organisation none of the
organisations presented in this paper would support
this. In Iron and Ring there was more recognition of the
conditions of readiness although their importance and
relationship with sustainability was still not fully
understood. Although for Ring the improvement activity
was still very project based focused on particular
department and areas through an improvement team.
Iron was probably closer to continuous than process
improvement than the other two organisations in that
Lean was being