Time=Money=Competitive Edge

Editor Kelly Carr and I just returned from a really excellent symposium, hosted by Whip Mix, in Louisville, Kentucky. The topic of the two-day program was lean manufacturing.* Going "lean" enables laboratories to recover valuable time and save money by streamlining their workflow and reevaluating their inventory needs. Needless to say, time is money and money saved here means being able to spend it there—in ways that enable you to have a competitive edge.

A panel of laboratory owners who've adopted lean thinking— making it the way they conduct their business—shared with attendees the before and after of their own operations. This provided all of us with a clear picture of how lean manufacturing works.

Implementing a lean strategy requires a paradigm shift—a dramatic change in the way you think about your business—and every staff member has to be on board with this to make it work. Their task—and yours—is to observe, examine and...