Collaboration as the Key to Improvement and Buy-In
Dr. Longshore's design process, in many ways, was straightforward: He simply brought stakeholders together in groups to ask where and how the lab could improve. "We held a series of Three P [Lean principle] events for every area of the lab," he says. "We trained them on principles, brainstormed, created ideas, and then finally built the model lab out of cardboard and simulated the testing. After that, we would talk about what happened, what we liked, what we didn't like, and we would improve the lab design and try it all again."
By actually walking through the mock-up lab, stakeholders could continually refine the core lab design until it met performance expectations. This kind of continual process improvement is a hallmark of Lean methodology, and here it proved invaluable. For instance, the lab team took similar efforts to reduce costs and improve output by, for example, scrutinizing lab bills to help lower utilization for tests that provided no clinical utility, as well as finding opportunities to cross-train technical staff, so they could perform more efficiently in a core lab environment.
It's also worth noting that, where many labs have a top-down, medical-director-driven mentality, Dr. Longshore saw the value in hearing from stakeholders at all levels. For instance, in addition to technical staff, Dr Longshore invited security guards, nurses, pharmacists, environmental services, an architect, among others to weigh in on lab design. The result, apart from efficient design, was that stakeholders were highly involved throughout the process, making it easier to secure buy-in at all levels. "[This approach] really improved our collaborative environment and the team concept," he says.