TRAVERSE CITY — Two NMC staff members are among five individuals earning Lean Office Champion certification from NMC’s Training Services division who will now take the continuous improvement lessons learned into several of the region’s largest employers. The five certified in September are:
- Crystal Bailey, Hagerty Center at Northwestern Michigan College
- Kay Hall, NMC
- Deb Kimball, Munson Medical Center
- Amanda Rommell, Paul Oliver Memorial Hospital
- Penny Saemisch, Kalkaska Memorial Health Center
During the six-month program, participants are trained to apply lean manufacturing principles to their office and healthcare workplaces. Two sessions are hosted by each organization, the classroom training involves intensive hands-on activities, and each champion completes several continuous improvement projects in their workplace.
Rewards were evident before the program even ended.
“By applying lean principles to the process, we were able to shorten the lead time for Practice Pro, our newsletter for local physician practices, from eight weeks to less than four,” said Deb Kimball, physician liaison at Munson Medical Center.
Lean principles are based on the Toyota production system. Manufacturing was the first American industry that adopted its principles. In the last ten years, lean has migrated from the shop floor into manufacturing offices, healthcare settings, and most recently service industries.
MC Training Services has been certifying lean champions since 2007. The objective of the program is to enable companies to build internal capacity to support their continuous improvement journey.
The next Champion certification opportunities will start in December 2012 for manufacturing and February 2013 for service industries, including healthcare. For more information or to register, please contact Vicki Rumbach, 231-995-2218. Additional information on Champion and NMC’s other, customized training services is available online.