How is car manufacturing like health and care and how can lean production principles be used to deliver better patient services? This was the question being addressed on the two-day study tour to Nissan’s production plant and the Tees, Esk Valley and Wear NHS Foundation Trust.

With just 24 places available, we asked members to apply for spots via a ballot. The winners were chosen at random and we were lucky to have a great spread of members from all over the country. As well as the opportunity to visit both sites, attendees were able to meet for a reflection session on the evening of the first day, to share learning and discuss insights.

Nissan

The Nissan production plant is the largest ever to exist in the UK, producing 115 cars an hour and 1,300 a day. It employs 6,700 workers and occupies over 362,000m2.

Members spent the day touring the production line where they were able to hear and feel what can be achieved using a Lean manufacturing culture. The day was broken into two parts:

Plant Background and Tour

The Nissan Sunderland team and Renault-Nissan Consulting Lean manufacturing experts shared the practical implementation of Lean tools including Visual Management, Standard Operations, Kaizen, Quick Response Quality Control, 5S and more.

Applying learning

An interactive Q&A and open discussion session, to hear feedback and help members think about how to apply the Lean principles on the tour to their own workplaces.

Looking forward to day two of @theQCommunity #Qvisits to Nissan. 🚗 pic.twitter.com/QjEXbvMnaH

— Wasim Baqir (@wasimbaqir) October 3, 2018

@theQcommunity very excited at the start of visit to Nissan #Qvisits pic.twitter.com/HB3caH1F2e

— Dr SLW 💙 (@Suzannewakely1) October 2, 2018

https://twitter.com/garyfloughran/status/1047159475109580803

You can see a selection of photos from the day here.

And check out some videos of the production line in action:

Tees, Esk, Valley and Wear NHS Foundation Trust

ln 2008 this mental health trust in the North East of England committed to join the North East Transformation System (NETS), developing a shared Transformation System to use the same method to improve the quality of care and remove waste from its systems.

Steve Bartley, Head of Sevice, Claire Reed, Quality Improvement Manager, and Wendy Milburn, Quality Improvement Lead were the hosts for the day, guiding the visitors through the trust’s ten year journey implementing its new way of working.

https://twitter.com/garyfloughran/status/1047410214021021697

If you want to engage in business change activity you need to be able to talk to your staff on a level that they can relate to. If they see you out there every day practicing those techniques, they’ll come along with you. There’s no shortcut unfortunately. We’re now 10 years down the line and it’s taken a lot of hard work and senior leadership support to make it happen – Steve Bartley

Members can view the Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust QI presentation below.

The attendees saw an impressive array of visual management techniques in action throughout the trust unit.

Great first day for our @theQCommunity group at @TEWVQIS hearing how they both manage daily and also make step chances through use of #kaizen and #RPIW #Qvisits. Here’s a mental health locality visual control board – great example of #visual management pic.twitter.com/TjUMraQxjq

— Emma Adams (@emmaadamsGenQ) October 2, 2018

Reflections from the attendees

All of the attendees had the opportunity to meet for an evening reflection session over the course of the visit. It was a great opportunity to unwind, connect with other members and share reflections from the visits.

It’s the end of day 1 of the first #qcommunity study tour and attendees are debriefing and sharing reflections from #lean learnings @Nissan – stay tuned for more from this insightful #qvisits pic.twitter.com/3QpVbulEjk

— The Q community (@theQCommunity) October 2, 2018

Hear directly from some of the members that attended in these short video interviews.

For more information on this and other visits, see the visits homepage or contact the Q team.

More resources (members only)

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