How We Helped a Clinic and a Collision Shop

“We deep dive into the process, we walk with them, we engage them, we engage their leaders, we listen to them, we look at all the details that go into the process so we can come out with one current state, which has all the process steps, all the inefficiencies,” says Charanjit Singh (CJ) Bawa, Lean Coach and founder of QCDMS.

Charanjit Singh Bawa said how they’d been working in a clinic, where they went in, they engaged all the people, trained all the people, brought them together, did a high-level map, understood what their processes were, so they could start the Gemba walk or the process walk.

“We deep dive into the process, we walk with them, we engage them, we engage their leaders, we listen to them, we look at all the details that go into the process of taking care of the patient and coming out with one current state, which had all the process steps, all the inefficiencies,” he continues. “And we found out, there were redundant steps, same file was touched 5 times, the patients and the technicians were walking back and forth. Even all work of the technician, there were so many redundant steps in there, which was waste. The equipment was not working. We got them together. The wait time of the patient was reduced from one and a half hour to half an hour.”

It was just a small example. Talking about a collision shop, Charanjit Singh Bawa pointed out that they had used the same approach. They went in, they engaged the people, they understood what the purpose was, they trained them, they mapped the process at high level, they understood what the big level pains were and then they walked the Gemba or the process with them.

“And we found out, when the car was coming in, they were not taking it properly,” he says. “They were not writing down all the parts that are needed to complete the repairs and they were all running around. Missing parts… they are ordering the parts, which is too late in the process. Or a body guy doesn’t finish his job right and it goes to the prepping station. Prepping station is spending half an hour reworking, what could have been done in the previous station.”

Charanjit Singh Bawa concluded saying that they improved their communication. “They started meeting every day, talking about the numbers, the quality… And soon they started to improve and their time reduced from 10 days to seven days from start to finish.”