Websites
Process Excellence Network is an online community for finding Six Sigma and Lean Six Sigma information, discussing ideas, and sharing Process Excellence best practices. The European PEX Awards are highly respected in lean circles and our Trust has been a previous winner.
http://www.processexcellencenetwork.com/
The Health Foundation is an independent charity working to continuously improve the quality of healthcare in the UK. The Health Foundation has worked with BICS and the Trust on a number of projects.
http://www.health.org.uk/
The King's Fund is a charity that seeks to understand how health services in England can improve. Using that insight they help to shape policy, transform services and bring behaviour change.
http://www.kingsfund.org.uk/
Thedacare is a healthcare provider in Wisconsin, USA. Thedacare is an implementer of lean in health where we learned from their experiences.
http://www.thedacare.org/About-Us.aspx
More information about their lean work is available here:
http://www.createvalue.org/
The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) in the USA believes that everyone deserves safe and effective health care, and they have been working with health care providers and leaders throughout the world to fulfill that promise.
http://www.ihi.org/
The Advancing Quality Alliance (AQuA), launched in spring 2010, to provide co-ordinated support to organisations across NHS North West (including Local Authorities) to help them deliver sustainable quality improvements, promoting and sharing best practice, provide improvement training to strengthen capability locally and develop and share benchmarked quality intelligence.
http://www.advancingqualityalliance.nhs.uk/
The Lean Enterprise Academy is a non-profit Academy based in the UK. It is a core member of the Lean Global Network established by the Lean Enterprise Institute (LEI) in the USA. The website has interesting articles, a message / discussion board and general helpful information.
http://www.leanuk.org/
You can also sign up for free Lean Community monthly e-letters from Daniel Jones updates on Lean Enterprise Academy activities. Please complete the Lean Community registration form.
http://www.leanuk.org/pages/lean_join.htm
The NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement have several articles and web pages dedicated to how Lean can help improve services in healthcare, please follow link to go to their website.
http://www.institute.nhs.uk/ServiceTransformation/Lean+Thinking/
The NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement are giving staff the opportunity to join CHAIN 3, a network for people with an interest in innovation and improvement in the NHS and social care. CHAINs (Contact, Help, Advice and Information Networks) are free, multi-professional and informal online networks for people working in the sphere of health and social care. They provide a simple, non-hierarchical mechanism for mutual support and sharing experience, ideas and aspirations, using a unique combination of facilitation, online directories and targeted e-mails.
CHAIN 3 will provide a rich pool of contacts who share an interest in innovation and improvement from the widest possible range of organisations and professions with a locus to health and social care. As a member you will benefit from access to all of the online CHAIN Directories, enabling you to identify and make direct contact with other members as you please.
http://chain.ulcc.ac.uk/chain/join_chain3.html
NHS Networks has initiated a discussion forum on lean Thinking. You will need to register to participate in discussion but you can view the forum without registration.
http://www.networks.nhs.uk/forums/forumdisplay/
Superfactory is a great website if you are just interested in browsing info on lean, you can see case studies, read articles, get tips, post messages, enter discussions, see the suggested reading list and more:
http://www.superfactory.com/
This is the Lean Enterprise Institute and is the US version of the UK Lean Enterprise Academy and has similar info but with slightly N American flavour. You can sign up for Jim Womack's monthly newsletter:
http://www.lean.org/