Customer Reviews

A3 Problem Solving for Healthcare: A Practical Method for Eliminating Waste

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This is a must-have book in healthcare, no matter what your level of experience or understanding with Lean Manufacturing concepts and the Toyota Production System. The author has captured the essence of Toyota's most effective process improvement tool-- the A3. If you are a beginner, the book is simple, straightforward, and pragmatic with examples that clarify the concepts. If you are a veteran, the book will serve as a great reminder of everything you should be doing, and will be invaluable as a tool for teaching and coaching. Even though the book is written for healthcare, the truth is, it would be useful for any industry. Like the topic it addresses, the book is lean and waste-free.

A3 Problem Solving for Health Care is a must have book for any Lean health care library. This book is a wonderful "coach" for someone learning A3 problem solving. The author takes the reader through a step-by-step, common sense approach to using this essential Lean tool. The book is filled with great examples of A3 use in every day health care practice areas.

Author Cindy Jimmerson, an internationally popular leader in Lean health care has, yet again, demonstrated her creative and unique approach to a critical subject that can and will change the future of how health care is delivered. Her straight-forward, entertaining, and practical approach to A3 problem solving is easy to learn and easy to apply in the course of daily work.

In particular, Ms Jimmerson demonstrates how A3 problem solving can be used by any member of the health care team to improve how care is delivered by eliminating waste and focusing on moving all of the work that is done towards IDEAL.

The design of Ms Jimmerson's A3 format, using the left side of the form to establishing understanding of the current condition and the right side to identify a target condition and the ways to achieve that target condition, is easy to use because of its logical, step-by-step approach.

The wonderful things about Ms Jimmerson's method of A3 problem solving is that her format can be used not only to solve problems in the course of daily work, but also as a template for a meeting, for orientation of new staff, as departmental guidelines, and to demonstrate projects completed and projects in progress to regulating bodies.

If one had to choose one book to keep handy for daily reference in relation to Lean health care and problem solving, this would be the book.