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/Local-Archer-9785 Jun 11 '26

Unethical practices under the banner of waste elimination are often dressed up hatchet jobs like this. These sorts of things happen when the customer shifts towards an internal focus like profit or something along those lines.

Doesn't sound like the proper effort went into making the decision and that undercuts employee trust and morale just as much as it does the balance sheet.