Lean Education Research Articles

Lean Construction Journal – Special Issue Call for Lean Education: Principles, Practices, and Simulations for Enhancing Lean Education and Training

The purpose of this special issue is to help identify and gather the emerging methods, technology, approaches, and advancing standards for well-known educational modules, simulations, and games as well as new content that can enhance the understanding of lean principles, methods, and practices. This call summarizes the topics, scope, and timeline to elicit submissions for the special issue gathering content related to Enhancing Lean Education and Training. The lean construction community has a rich history of engaging its students in active simulations and educational practices that use experiential learning. While the lean community and adoption of lean methods and systems have grown significantly across the construction industry, the methods of teaching and training the next generation of lean practitioners have continued to grow and evolve. The practices and modules that are developed by academics or industry practitioners are often maintained in small communities but not easily accessible for use and advancement of the industry, and vice versa with industry firms creating their own versions or new content. In addition to teaching lean in academic environments, lean education and training is applied extensively in industry training environments. As projects develop new methods of onboarding and training team members, or as projects find new or better processes for capturing reflective experience sharing and project-related learning, these practices benefit from greater dissemination and feedback from other teams or lean community members.

Disparities in the Timeliness of Addressing Patient-Initiated Telephone Calls in a Primary Care Clinic: The Impact of Quality Improvement Interventions

ABSTRACT A timely response to patient-initiated telephone calls can affect many aspects of patient health, including quality of care and health equity. Historically, at a family medicine residency clinic, at least 1 out of 4 patient calls remained unresolved three days after the call was placed. We sought to explore whether there were differential delays in resolution of patient concerns for certain groups and how these were affected by quality improvement interventions to increase responsiveness to patient calls. A multidisciplinary team at a primary care residency clinic applied Lean education and tools to improve the timeliness of addressing telephone encounters. Telephone encounter data were obtained for one year before and nine months after the intervention. Data were stratified by race, ethnicity, preferred language, sex, online portal activation status, age category, zip code, patient risk category, and reason for call. Stratified data revealed consistently worse performance on telephone encounter closure by 72 hours for Black/African American patients compared to Hispanic and non-Hispanic White patients pre-intervention. Interventions resulted in statistically significant overall improvement, with an OR of 2.9 (95% CI: 2.62 to 3.21). Though interventions did not target a specific population, pre-intervention differences based on race and ethnicity resolved post-intervention. Telephone calls serve as an important means of patient communication with care teams. General interventions to improve the timeliness of addressing telephone encounters can lead to sustainable improvement in a primary care academic clinic and may also alleviate disparities.

The Effect of Lean Methodology on EFL Learners’ Reading Comprehension Performance

As the demands of English language learners should be satisfied, the question of various teaching techniques has become contentious in classrooms. Lean, a cutting-edge approach, provides a successful way to learn a language. Teachers must employ efficient teaching strategies to accomplish their goals and excite learners. The current study looked into how teaching English as a second language affected students' ability to read comprehension. A control group and an experimental group were utilized in a pre-post-test quasi-experimental design. Following the pre-test, the experimental group received the treatment whereas the control group did not. For the analysis, 40 language learners from a language school in Erbil, Iraq, were taken into consideration. Lean was also disseminated to the participants to help them determine their aims before being applied as a teaching approach to the students. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used in the statistical analysis (i.e., Independent samples t-test). In terms of how the two groups performed on the pre- and post-tests. It was discovered that the scores were different in a significant manner. This brand-new Lean education strategy has been demonstrated in this research conducted in the context of Iraq to improve learning outcomes (in this case, reading comprehension skills), complete the curriculum on schedule, and eliminate any specific waste.

Designing online delivery of Lean education during COVID-19

PurposeThis study describes how two organisations transitioned to teaching Lean online during and post Covid-19. This study aims to establish how Lean teaching and training can be designed and delivered effectively online without adverse effects on the student’s learning experience of Lean concepts.Design/methodology/approachA case study approach was used to review the design, application and results of the transition to online Lean teaching and training. Qualitative and quantitative methods were deployed to assess the results.FindingsOnline Lean learning and application were assured via the design of practical problem-based teaching environments, aided by using the virtual classroom as an obeya room and as a kaizen environment where students worked in teams. Students were enabled to learn and apply Lean tools practically and reflect on their learnings.Practical implicationsThis study demonstrates that effective online design can ensure. Lean methods are understood without affecting the student's learning, classroom experience and grasp of concepts.Originality/valueTo the best of the author’s knowledge, this is one of the first studies on implementing Lean training and education online during COVID-19 under the lens of both a training provider and university education viewpoint. The changes validated best practices for virtual Lean education and training in the organisations under study, maintained post-COVID.

LEAN MANAGEMENT AND SMART EDUCATION

LEAN MANAGEMENT AND SMART EDUCATION

Understanding Lean—Statistical Analysis of Perceptions and Self-Deception Regarding Lean Management

Despite the benefits of a lean business system, many organisations struggle to implement and sustain lean initiatives. The purpose of this work was to explore in what way a leader’s deeper knowledge or different understandings of lean affects the lean implementation and its outcomes. The research methodology incorporated a survey of 757 participants. How respondents understood lean was assessed and later correlated to their extent of lean knowledge and specific understanding. This was supported by exploratory factor analysis and structural equation modelling. What caused participants to pursue lean knowledge was also assessed. Low lean knowledge and experience correlated with a system, tools and processes perspective of lean that was perceived to provide a low competitive advantage. Those of high lean knowledge had a much more holistic view of lean that encompassed both socio and technical aspects and also perceived greater competitive advantages from lean. Results showed 88% of people were (are) not at all familiar with lean, 9% of low knowledge and 3% of high knowledge. This paper promotes the importance of management knowledge in establishing a lean business system and exposes that many are actually self-deceived regarding their knowledge of lean. It identifies the need to develop lean education and recommends further research in this area. It also provides a conceptual framework for the implementation of lean with an emphasis on leadership learning. This paper contributes statistical evidence and a new perspective on the cause of lean success and failure.

Evaluating education innovations rapidly with build-measure-learn: Applying lean startup to health professions education

Purpose The Lean Startup approach allows innovators (including innovative educators) to rapidly identify and refine promising ideas into models that actually work. Our aim is to outline key principles of Lean Startup, apply these to health professions education, and illustrate these using personal experience. Methods and Results All innovations are grounded in numerous assumptions; these assumptions should be explicitly identified, prioritized, and empirically tested (‘validated learning’). To identify and test assumptions, innovators need to get out of the office and interact with customers (learners, teachers, administrators, etc). Assumptions are tested using multiple quick cycles of Build (a ‘minimal viable product’ [MVP]), Measure (using metrics that relate meaningfully to the assumption), and Learn (interpret data and decide to persevere with further refinements, or pivot to a new direction). The MVP is a product version that allows testing of one or more key assumptions with the least effort. We describe a novel ‘Lean Education Canvas’ that synopsizes an innovation and its business model on one page, to help identify assumptions and monitor progress. We illustrate these principles using three cases from health professions education. Conclusions Lean Startup has tremendous potential for rapid, robust innovation and evaluation in education. Practice points The Lean Startup approach allows innovators (including innovative educators) to rapidly identify and refine promising ideas into models that actually work. All innovations are grounded in numerous assumptions; these assumptions should be explicitly identified, prioritized, and empirically tested (‘validated learning’). To identify and test assumptions, innovators need to get out of the office and interact with customers (learners, teachers, administrators). Assumptions are tested using multiple fast, iterative cycles of Build (a minimal viable product), Measure (using metrics that relate meaningfully to the assumption), and Learn (interpret data and decide to persevere with further refinements, or pivot to a new direction). The ‘minimal viable product’ (MVP) is a version of the product that allows innovators to test one or more key assumptions with the least effort.

Virtual reality supported trainings for lean education: conceptualization, design and evaluation of competency-oriented teaching-learning environments

PurposeThe purpose of this approach is to structure and facilitate the development of competency-oriented virtual training scenarios. This approach should help to develop reproducible results.Design/methodology/approachThis publication presents a procedure for the structured, competency-oriented design of virtual teaching–learning environments. The procedure is based on the competency-oriented design of learning factories according to Tisch and consists of a total of three phases with various substeps. The different steps of the method are presented by means of an application example and the generated scenario is evaluated by means of a competency measurement according to Glass regarding its suitability for teaching competencies.FindingsIn addition to an application example that introduces the approach, this publication presents concrete results from the research project. In addition to a review of the opportunities and limitations of virtual reality (VR) in continuing education, these also refer to possible, realizable requirements for the use of VR. In addition, results on the suitability of VR learning environments for competency development in the context of value streaming mapping training are presented.Originality/valueThis approach represents a substantial extension of existing concepts for the design of physical learning factory training for lean topics. It can help learning factory operators and other training providers to design competency- and user-oriented virtual training. VR offers a multitude of potentials in this context, but these can only be exploited through conscientious use of the technology.

Application of lean education as a way for the elimination wastes in an automotive manufacturing process: A case study in a company of stamped products sector of Manus Industrial Pole / Aplicação da educação magra como forma de eliminação de resíduos num processo de fabrico de automóveis: Um estudo de caso numa empresa do sector de produtos estampados do Pólo

The present work was carried out in a company in the sector of Metal Imprints that provides parts for automakers of the Two Wheels Sector that needed to improve the productivity of the process of stamping and welding. It intends to present the process of development of the professionals of a company of printed products, from the application of tools associated with the philosophy of lean manufacturing, aiming to carry out activities that reduce the waste in the production process. For this, the methodology used was a case study, in addition to bibliographical research on the themes of lean manufacturing and lean education. The main results achieved were the absorption of the knowledge obtained that enabled the generation of activities that contributed to the reduction of wastes within the analyzed processes. In the end, we can conclude that for companies to remain competitive in the market, they must invest more and more in human capital. In this sense, lean education is a very viable alternative for reaching the goals and objectives of organizations.

БЕРЕЖЛИВОЕ ОБРАЗОВАНИЕ: СТРАТЕГИИ ЭКОНОМИЧЕСКОГО ПОВЕДЕНИЯ В УСЛОВИЯХ САНКЦИЙ

Introduction. The paper presents the results of a study on the current problems facing educational organizations due to the introduction of Western sanctions, and the ways to solve them productively through the implementation of the concept of lean education. New challenges to educational organizations in the current context are described, possible avenues to modernize the Russian education system are proposed, including a possible solution to the problematic situation. The issues of fostering lean culture and lean thinking in teachers and students are touched upon. Materials and methods. The methodological framework for the research is the concept of lean production. The study substantiates the need and the possibility of implementing this concept in the educational sphere, and demonstrates the potential of Lean technologies to improve the efficiency and quality of educational activity. An attempt is made to raise topical research issues of the implementation of the lean production principles in education, which are insufficiently represented in the scientific literature. Research results. The examination of the initial experience of rational economic behavior of educational organizations under sanctions involves an analysis of examples, methods, and prospects for the development of the concept of lean education. Various aspects of functioning of the educational organizations under sanctions are touched upon, which force them to search and find effective means of solving current and potential problems. The study shows that in today’s context, educational organizations should pay more attention to the issues of economy, rational use of resources, import substitution, and, at the same time, contribute to shaping a lean personality type, which is a strategic direction for ensuring economic independence, sovereignty, and competitiveness of Russia and its education system. Conclusions. It is emphasized that the conceptualization of the lean education model and its practical implementation in the national education can and should be a relevant response to Western sanctions. The practicality of creating a lean culture and lean thinking as one of the key factors of sustainable socio-economic development of the country is argued.

The Concept of Lean Manufacturing as a Tool for Improving the Process of Education

Aim. The presented study aims to examine approaches to organizing the educational process in the system of general education in accordance with the basic principles of lean philosophy, better known in Russia as “lean manufacturing philosophy”, which has proven to be an effective tool for building business processes in industrial enterprises.Tasks. The authors determine the value created by applying the principles of lean education in the general education system, describing the value creation flow and its customer; examine the classification of losses in the value stream and identify losses in the educational process based on national standards for lean manufacturing and quality management systems; apply the described system to the educational process of Gorchakov MGIMO Lyceum.Methods. This study uses empirical (observation, measurement) and theoretical (abstraction, formalization, and modeling) research methods, as well as methods of grouping, comparative, structural, and functional analysis.Results. The study substantiates the authors’ hypothesis that the analysis of the educational process through the definition of value for the consumer/customer and the identification of different types of losses transforms the value creation flow into the “lean education” flow, which perfectly meets the needs of stakeholders. The maps of the current and future state of the value creation flow of the educational process of Gorchakov MGIMO Lyceum are modeled. A comparative classification of the types of losses in the manufacturing and educational processes is created. The results of testing the hypothesis in the educational process of the specified lyceum are presented.Conclusions. Application of lean philosophy (the concept of lean manufacturing) can improve various activities, including education. The study provides evidence for this by defining and constructing the value creation flow in accordance with the requests of all stakeholders in the educational process and also by identifying losses in the methods and processes of information transfer and further evaluation of the knowledge and skills of students.

The application of simulation in lean production research: a critical review and future directions

PurposeSimulation has attracted increasing attention in lean production research as a response to address the complexities of the production environment and difficulties of dealing with changes within a system. Considerable growth of using simulation to facilitate lean acceptance and implementation has been observed across different projects and sectors. However, a thorough review of the development and use of simulation in lean production research is limited.Design/methodology/approachThis study aims to address this gap by reviewing 311 journal papers published in the past two decades on this specific research area and identify the state-of-the-art development and propose future research directions.FindingsThe review shows that current studies related to simulation in lean production research can be categorised into two major research streams, namely, simulation assisted lean facilitation and evaluation, and simulation-based lean education and training. Under the first research stream, a total of 19 application areas have been identified which applied both lean and simulation in their studies. The evolution of the simulation techniques used in these studies has been analysed as well. Meanwhile, four types of simulation games have been identified in the stream of simulation-based lean education and training and the impact and applicability of the different simulation and games have been discussed. A framework for engaging lean and simulation is suggested based on the review of the existing studies. The analysis in both streams also highlights the importance of stakeholder engagement and the utilisation of information technologies for future studies.Practical implicationsThe findings of this study are expected to provide useful references for the future development and application of simulation in lean production research.Originality/valueThis paper conducted a broad and extensive review of simulation integrated lean production research. An in-depth examination of the retrieved papers was conducted through a structured and quantitative analysis to understand the current body of knowledge.

Бережливое образование

Бережливое образование

The knowledge and importance of Lean Education based on academics’ perspectives: an exploratory study

This paper presents an exploratory study on the knowledge and importance of integrating Lean Education in curricula from the Academy perspective. The study was based on the analysis of participants’ outcomes of workshops settled in international conferences. These workshops were used to promote Lean Education as a fundamental content and competency to be taught to the new professionals, independently of their future activity. Having in their DNA Lean content and competency, professionals will be thinkers adopting whole system-thinking, a sustainable conscious and ethical behaviour prepared to face Fourth industrial revolution demands. The authors believe that Lean Education provides such competencies to the new professionals and have been settling and operationalized such workshops in different contexts, involving more than 100 participants (mainly, academics) with teaching responsibilities in training the future workforce. Workshops outcomes were obtained from participants’ active discussions and through a satisfaction assessment questionnaire filled by all participants at the end of the workshop. Results show that Lean Education is valuable by academics (more than 50% of the participants gave a high score to the practicality, value, and timeliness of the workshop contents). Nevertheless, a small percentage (12%) knows what Lean Education is or teaches Lean in the classes (10%).

Andragogy in the context of teaching Lean management

The article discusses the major issues of teaching lean management for adolts and provides the rational to transfer from pedagogy model to andragogy model of teaching. The model of lean personality is desigoed. The educational principles in lean production are also analyzed The article submits the forms of the lean education with the focus on Process Enterprise as the most important.

Case study: using value stream mapping in the educational process - how focusing on student actions can help depict the teaching process

Although many lean higher education efforts have focused on administrative/support services and processes, only a few actual applications of lean methods have been meant for teaching, which is the core business of higher education. The absence of experiments and research in these contexts has challenged us to apply lean to our own undergraduate course. We have paid special attention in this experiment to the use of Value Stream Mapping (VSM) to depict teaching process, the shortcomings of VSM and the use of service blueprinting.

New Approaches in Lean Management

Abstract This article explores the future of Lean Management, its implementation potential in other industrial sectors as well as Lean Management education process. At the same time it explains possibilities of its implementation in industries such as Public Administration, Healthcare and IT services. It describes how the various principles of Lean Management are transmitted to the service sector and what differences arise by this process. In conclusion the article describes and compares different ways of Lean education in various countries and finally the best teaching practice with regard to practice is suggested and proposed.

Special Issue on Design and Manufacturing for Environmental Sustainability

This issue focuses on design and manufacturing theories and methodologies aimed at achieving environmental sustainability. It has been two decades since environmental sustainability and related issues have been discussed as main issues in design and manufacturing. In these 20 years, theories and methodologies have been developed on environmentally conscious design, including the design of disassembly and life cycle assessment, and manufacturing techniques for saving energy and resources and low emission. In spite of these efforts, the seriousness of the environmental issues, e.g., global warming, is getting harder and harder and new issues continuously arise. It has gradually been recognized that essential problems reside within the manufacturing industry structure and the center of the manufacturing industry has shifted from developed countries such as Japan and US to developing countries with accelerating mass production and mass consumption. Based on this recognition, this special issues deals with rather novel topics emerging in the domain of design and manufacturing for environmental sustainability. The first five papers provide a global scope on the relationship between environmental sustainability and manufacturing industry, including global energy consumption patterns, manufacturing industry scenario writing, informative reviews on lean remanufacturing, urban mining, and education on resource scarcity. The second three papers focus on human recognition and behavior – emerging topics in this domain – including socially responsible investment, customer choice, and the routing of electric vehicles. The last five papers propose new methods or technologies of environmentally conscious design and sustainable manufacturing, including ecobusiness design, electric vehicle heating systems, and the sustainability evaluation of manufacturing processes. Some papers, revised and extended in response to the editor’s invitations, were originally presented at EcoDesign 2013: 8th International Symposium on Environmentally Conscious Design and Inverse Manufacturing (Jeju, Korea). The editor sincerely thanks the authors and reviewers for their devoted work in making this special issue possible. We hope that these articles will encourage further research on design and manufacturing for environmental sustainability.

Virtual modelling for simulation-based lean education

This research presents a virtual simulation to enable students to explore and learn lean concepts through virtual experimentation. Exposing students to these concepts is crucial as demand for engineers with an in-depth understanding of lean philosophies is rising. The virtual simulation platform developed provides students an environment to apply lean concepts in experiments in the same manner as current methods for teaching lean, which include hands-on projects and simulation. The platform provides a simple interface, the ability to store results, and the modelling power of state of the art virtual reality software. The virtual simulation platform is built using the VE-Suite virtual engineering framework, which provides user-friendly dialogue boxes, graphical models, performance display gauges, and an editable layout. A mathematical model of an industrial process where lean can be implemented was created for this framework. In addition, a survey instrument is planned to gather information about strengths and weaknesses of the method to implement continuous improvement to the model. By working through this virtual simulation, students can experience multiple applications of lean in a real world setting without constructing an entire line or disrupting production in an existing line.

A Case Study Conducted with Nurses: Insight into the Implementation of Lean Principles and Techniques in a Medical Setting

The implementation of lean methods in a health care setting is difficult when nurses are inadequately informed about lean techniques, principles, and the intent of these when applied in health care. To aid in communication amongst health care officials and ease of workplace transformation, there is a need for a supplemental lean education program that is tailored to the needs of nurses. The high-level objective of this research project is to identify and eliminate waste in health care facilities to ultimately save the facility (public-, private-, or government-owned) money without compromising customer satisfaction. The ultimate goal of this project is to develop an introductory presentation and documentation material to help inform nurses about the importance of implementing lean techniques and principles. In this article, current inefficiencies in nurses’ work processes are identified. An inventory of their current knowledge base and learning outcomes is developed through discussion-based interviews.