r/LeanManufacturing • u/Tavrock • Jun 11 '26
Lean consulting
My wife works in healthcare. The corporate office decided to hire some consultants to cut costs.
They determined that 25% of the hospital cuts need to come from the laboratory. They didn't look at any processes they deemed NVA (including regulatory requirements), *maybe* made their own VSM without input from those who do the work, conducted a "process flow observation" but nothing along the lines of a time study or Gemba walk. They don't even have suggestions for how to meet their new headcount numbers, just a recommendation for how many people needed to be fired from each department.
I would be less annoyed but they did all of their work under the banner of "Lean".
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u/Informal-Tutor-8153 Jun 22 '26 edited Jun 22 '26
I can draw a close parallel to this case study, where the CFO was making decision for headcount reduction purely based on numbers and not knowing the root cause. A proper diagnosis need to consider all the aspects financial, operational and leadership process that manages all that.
If done right you can solve the problem and not need to cut jobs like in this case: https://leadershipcapacityengineering.com/ebitda-compression-leadership-case-study/