Last month I joined Eric Buhrens, CEO at Lean Enterprise Institute (LEI), to host a leadership team from Tel Aviv’s Sourasky Medical Center. They were on a study mission to many of Boston’s fine hospitals and were winding up their week with a visit to LEI. Early in the discussion, one of our guests asked, “In a few words, please tell me what lean is.”

Eric fielded this question concisely, explaining, “Lean means creating more value for customers with fewer resources.” He then asked me to relate the following story, a bit more long-winded, to amplify the concept.

I had a recent sojourn of more than a few days at one of Boston’s hospitals, which afforded me a rare opportunity for extended direct observation. In lean lingo, I was observing from the point of view of the “object” of improvement—the part to be worked on. In a factory, the object of improvement is a piece of material, a part being progressively converted by agents of improvement into a finished product.

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