A core aspect of lean is execution, fast execution. Ohno and Shingo often pushed their folks to just try new ideas and refine later instead of endlessly discussing every possible nuance in an attempt at perfect planning... and thereby getting nothing done. There's a lot of logic in that, and many of us have been at organizations that experienced "improvement paralysis."
But there's another side of the story, another aspect or extreme that needs to be avoided as well.
President Barack Obama has pledged to "wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its cost," but many in the field warn that rushing the process of digitizing patients' records could lead to wasteful spending.
[snip political aspects of story, from both sides]
An unrealistically fast rollout could lead to unqualified technicians installing systems in ways that lead to frustration and backlash among doctors, warns Mr. Glaser, who serves on the board of the National eHealth Collaborative, a public-private partnership that aims to accelerate the development of health IT. "If it's too hasty, you can create so many bad experiences that people say...'My data's a mess and my patients are angry,'" Mr. Glaser says.
Waiting for the perfect solution doesn't work. Jumping too quick is wasteful as well, both in terms of inappropriate or ineffective technologies and solutions being installed, but also in terms of creating customer frustration... which leads to difficulty embracing what could be a positive change over the long haul.