When you have an idea that really works to improve the processes or the environment in your life keeping it to yourself can be tantamount to selfishness.  It’s important for companies to constantly find ways to do things different, better and more efficient in order to streamline their processes and procedures.  At times a company comes across a way to do their work that will translate to many other industries as well.  Whether it’s a new process, or it has to do with ensuring there is less waste to make more use of resources changes and technological advancements are helping to make us more efficient in our lives.

Every so often these changes can cross industries and might surprise us how that can work.  Take for instance what Toyota has done.  As the largest automotive manufacturer in the world a streamlined system helps to save money.  They have created the Toyota Production System which is considered to be the most efficient way to manufacture and build vehicles.  This system was developed in house at Toyota and offers small continuous improvements to all them to be efficient in all of their processes.

At the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, which is a teaching hospital the patients lining up to visit the eye clinic was overwhelming.  There wasn’t a single day where this team could actually catch up and typically had to either work much longer hours than expected or turn patients away.  Certainly the teaching part of the medical center was suffering because of the need of patients which often has to be put ahead of the learning in order to ensure they are fully taken care of during their visit.  This team certainly could use a way to streamline their processes and improve their overall efficiency.

With a partnership from the Toyota team many areas were identified in the medical center that could easily be improved in order to optimize the production and efficiency of the procedures.  By creating better and more efficient processes for the team the medical clinic experienced something they hadn’t in a long time which was the ability to treat everyone at the clinic, clearing the backlog and improving the lives and learning experience of everyone at that location.  This process helped the medical center get back to the important task of teaching their students while treating patients all thanks to a streamlined process form an automotive company.

As you can see with this example some processes, philosophies and changes can certainly be shared across industries to help companies be better at what they do.  In a world where efficiency is at a premium the need to make things better is important.  With this partnership alone we can see that the Toyota Production System might be useful in many different companies.  What will the next partner be for this automotive giant and how will they be able to positively affect the production process or even just find ways to improve the customer experience at the location?  Certainly this can make excellent positive improvements in the world.