The GE Brief: August 19, 2020
LEAN SWEEP
In the 1970s, a team of MIT researchers traveled to Japan to figure out why the country’s automakers were delivering cars faster than their Detroit competitors. What they learned at Toyota — that company’s famous Toyota Production System — would make its way back across the Pacific Ocean as lean management, a set of operating principles focused on boosting safety, quality and efficiency, reducing waste, and creating more value with fewer resources. In American business, lean has also delivered results — including at GE, which has placed lean management at the heart of its turnaround. As Betsy Bingham, GE Digital’s senior vice president for lean and operations, put it: “Lean is our strategy, lean is how we are going to run our business, it’s key to our growth.”
Powerful gains: Lean management practices have shown results, for instance, in Batesville, Mississippi, where a GE Aviation plant that makes parts for jet engines was able to cut losses by 60%, saving millions of dollars. And in Greenville, South Carolina, where it helped engineers cut production time for the ultraefficient HA class of electricity-generating gas turbines by nearly half. But the power of lean was cast into sharp relief with the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, when systematic thinking and smart management became more important than ever — and helped a GE plant in England quickly ramp up production of needed medical equipment.
Click here for a roundup of GE’s lean success stories so far.
2020’S HEALTHCARE VISION
In April, GE Healthcare CEO Kieran Murphy predicted that, after the coronavirus pandemic abates, “the healthcare industry will look very different from today — but this industry will only get stronger from our experience.” Last week, several industry leaders gathered to explore the post-pandemic future of healthcare. Because the pandemic has not yet abated, of course, they met virtually — at a webinar sponsored by GE Healthcare, in which they discussed how things like artificial intelligence and data analytics have been crucial tools against COVID-19, and will remain a mainstay of medicine going forward. Geoff Martin, CEO at GE Healthcare Consulting, noted that due to the pandemic, customers “have said we’ve leaped five, 10 years forward in the way we’re thinking about care and how we make care affordable.”
Taking care: In addition to the increasingly important roles played by software, data and analytics, the participants also talked about the challenge of caring for COVID-19 patients while allowing normal hospital business to continue. “We’re going to have to quickly adapt, no matter what’s going on, so nobody feels like they have to forgo care,” said John Beaman, Adventist Health’s chief business officer. One byproduct of the pandemic is a rise in virtual consultations — Beaman said Adventist went from seeing about 20% of its patients virtually to 80%, almost overnight.
Learn more here about how industry leaders are applying the lessons of COVID-19 to the future of medicine.
COOLEST THINGS ON EARTH ?
1. Building Blocks
Engineers at Washington University devised a way to turn a common red brick into an energy storage device.
2. Thoughtful Gesture
Scientists at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University combined a skinlike stretchable sensor with computer vision to create an artificial intelligence system that can recognize hand gestures.
3. Be It Resolved
Texas A&M University may have solved an old problem in electron microscopy with a fix that involves machine learning.
Read more here about this week’s Coolest Things on Earth.
— QUOTE OF THE DAY —
“No matter the environment, cost pressure or pandemic, we are committed to pushing forward, adapting with lean and continuing to improve problem-solving.”
— Richard Simpson, vice president of global supply chain at GE Gas Power, and Karen Hoyle, global lean leader at GE Power
Quote: GE Reports. Images: GE Reports.