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| Breaking
News
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| December 2007 |
Second Lean Healthcare Summit hosted in Ireland |
A Lean Healthcare Summit entitled “The Art of Reducing Inefficiencies in our Healthcare Systems” recently took place in Cork, Ireland. Organized by the Leading Edge Group, the event explored how inefficiencies and non-value-add activities in our healthcare systems could be eliminated in order to ensure the highest levels of patient satisfaction and care delivery.
The audience reflected the full spectrum of the Irish Healthcare sector both public and private, and feedback from all attendees was very positive.
The guest speaker for the evening was Simon Dodds - Consultant Vascular Surgeon for the Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust at the Good Hope Hospital, Birmingham in the UK. Simon has carried out tremendous work in redesigning the vascular surgery outpatient service at the Good Hope hospital as a One Stop Clinic, and has led other ground breaking innovations such as a Leg Ulcer Telemedicine (LUTM) Service – a shared electronic patient record system focused on the needs of a patient with leg ulcer problems. The system uses electronic referral, a PACS (picture archiving and communications system), and software that plots healing patterns based on archived images. The system, which has won an award for Innovative Service Delivery in the British National Health Service (NHS) Innovations Health & Social Care Awards, has helped accelerate healing time as well as reducing ulcer recurrence, thus providing an improved quality of life for patients. It has also proved to be major cost saver for the NHS.
Other speakers included Joe O'Callaghan from the Leading Edge Group who spoke on the topic “ Educating Healthcare Professionals on Eliminating Inefficiencies in Clinical and Administration Processes”. The final speaker of the evening was Sheila McGuinness, a project manager with a private health insurance company. Sheila presented on a recently completed thesis called ‘Can Lean Healthcare improve patient satisfaction and service delivery in the Irish hospital environment?’ |
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| December 2007 |
| Articulation Agreement agreed between Leading Edge Group and Community College of Vermont |
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Photo from left: John Whelton, Leading Edge Group; David Buchdahl, Community College of Vermont; Sharon Kaliouby, Enterprise Ireland; Joe Aherne, Leading Edge Group and Carol Buchdahl, Vermont Technical College. |
The Leading Edge Group and the Community College of Vermont (CCV) have recently signed an articulation agreement for our Lean Healthcare Green Belt Program. The purpose of this articulation agreement is to award four CCV credits and provide an official CCV transcript to individuals not otherwise affiliated with CCV who complete the Lean Healthcare Green Belt Program.
The agreement was signed by David Buchdahl, Dean of Academic Affairs at the Community College of Vermont, and Joe Aherne, CEO of the Leading Edge Group. Joe confirmed that this program is designed to promote professional certification in Lean Healthcare in the state of Vermont linking the Green Belt certification course with a credit-bearing course at CCV. |
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| November 2007 |
| Appointment of Don Clark as Senior Lean Facilitator to the Leading Edge Group |
Don Clark has joined the Leading Edge Group in the US as our senior Lean Facilitator. Don recently received his Executive MBA degree from the Daniels College of Business, University of Denver. He also received a BS in Environmental Management at the University of Findlay, Ohio. Additionally, he has also received extensive training in both Lean and Six Sigma process improvement methodologies with the most recent being Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt level training. Prior to that Don also completed Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, Lean Black Belt, and Six Sigma Green Belt training. He specializes in developing customized Lean Six Sigma (LSS) programs tailored to drive value enhancement within a client’s unique value stream.
Don is also an Executive Programs faculty member for the Institute for Leadership and Organizational Performance at Daniels College of Business at the University of Denver and serves as the Program Director for all Lean Healthcare programs.
Don has spent over 18 years with Johns Manville, a fiberglass manufacturing company with headquarters located in Denver, CO. While at Johns Manville Don was able to apply his LSS knowledge and skills to a wide variety of projects ranging from Kaizen events on the shop floor, to set-up reduction projects that improved timing and resource allocation on major equipment rebuilds, to VOC (voice of the customer) identification focused on redesigning the structure of the corporate environmental services group. He has also been instrumental in developing project benefit tracking mechanisms, running project identification and selection events, and training others through-out the organization on the various LSS tools sets. |
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| September 2007 |
| Leading Edge Opens US Contact Center |
The Leading Edge Group is proud to announce that it now has a physical presence in the USA through the opening of a contact center for any US-based enquiries for our product and service offerings. Our contact center is based in Parker Colorado and is headed by newly-appointed Business Development Consultant Kelley Williamson BFA.
Kelley has over twenty years of successful leadership and management; performance management; sales; process improvement; and organizational development with such companies as Software Spectrum, Expanets, Business Technology Consultants, RELERA, and others. She has a consistent record of significant contributions to profit levels and productivity. During her two years as Vice President of Sales for Business Technology Consultants at Software Spectrum, Kelley helped lead her division from $200,000 to approximately $5M in sales. Kelley also works as Manager of Learning and Development at the University of Colorado Hospital.
Full contact details for the Leading Edge Group's US office can be found on the Contact Us page on this site. To access this page, please click here. |
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| May 2007 |
| Leading Edge Group announces strategic arrangement with leading global business college |
| The Leading Edge Group and The Daniels College of Business at the University of Denver have announced an agreement to launch a new and unique Lean Helath care Education initiative. At a conference in Dublin last Friday, May 11th, as part of Entreprise Ireland's Technology Showcase, representatives from both sides of the new strategic partnership discusses their academic program aimed at preparing health professionals for managing change through process improvement accross the global healthcare sector.Please click here for more details |
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| May 2007 |
| Leading Edge Group Senior Lean Healthcare Consultant to speak at UK Healthcare Process Mapping Conference |
| Leading Edge Group Senior Lean Healthcare Consultant Joe O'Callaghan is to be one of the keynote speakers at an upcoming healthcare process mapping conference at The Royal Society in London on June 22nd. Read More |
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| April 2007 |
| The Leading Edge Group receives 2007 Business of the Year Award |
| The Leading Edge Group received a prestigious accolade on Friday 27th of April when Joe Aherne CPA, Chief Executive of the company was presented with the ConocoPhilips Business of the Year Award 2007 on behalf of Cobh and Harbour Chamber. In presenting the Award on behalf of ConocoPhilips Don Hegarty, spoke of the numerous accomplishments that the Leading Edge Group had achieved over the past 12 years and its continual growth in the areas of process improvement, supply chain management and the provision of Lean facilitation, education and training. In accepting the Award, Joe Aherne, thanked the Chamber and ConocoPhilips, and paid tribute to his team and his family, without whom, he said “this success would not have been possible”
The key note speaker at the event – former Taoiseach Albert Reynolds – complimented the Leading Edge Group team on its successes in industry over the last number of years, and encouraged all in attendance to strive towards a more knowledge-based competitive business environment in Ireland. Minister for Trade and Commerce – Michael Ahern T.D. – added his congratulations to the Leading Edge Group, and outlined his admiration for Joe Aherne and the team.
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Pictured above are Don Heagarty, of ConocoPhilips (left) and Kathleen Geary, Chief Executive, Cobh & Harbour Chamber (right), presenting the Business of the Year Award to Joe Aherne (centre), CEO, Leading Edge Group |
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| March 2007 |
Inaugural Lean Green Belt Supply Chain Management Programme a Huge Success |
Twenty-five students have recently completed a practical based Lean educational programme offered by the Leading Edge Group, UCC, and the Institute of Industrial Engineers. With a focus on workplace competence, the programme has achieved some remarkable results. February saw the successful completion of the first cohort of a Lean Green Belt Certificate offered by Leading Edge in conjunction with UCC as part of its Certificate/Diploma in Supply Chain Management. Accredited by the Irish Institute of Industrial Engineers, the part time programme also awards successful students 15 academic credits, contributing to a Diploma in Supply Chain awarded by the National University of Ireland.
This programme design assists individuals integrate their studies with their careers and incorporate their working experience into an accredited learning process. Dr. Seamus O’Reilly, Academic Programme Director, UCC points to “we’re delighted with the progress we’ve made in working with the Irish Institute of Industrial Engineers and Leading Edge as this brings together academic and industry input, learning and accreditation”.
The programme is primarily designed for those working in industry who wish to enhance their supply chain management skills, particularly graduates with an engineering/technical background, as well as technicians and operatives. This mix was very evident in the Certificate class of 2006/07 with participants from organisations including Pfizer, EMC, Musgrave, Bord Gais, PepsiCo, Novartis Sanima SCI, GlaxoSmithKline, and DePuy, Johnson & Johnson. For further information, please click here. |
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| January 2007 |
| Lean Healthcare Services Blog |
| Our Lean Healthcare division - Lean Healthcare Services- are proud to announce the launch of a Blog devoted to Lean Healthcare discussion and interaction. To read some interesting and enlightening posts or to add comments or queries of your own, please visit the Blog by clicking here.
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| December 2006 |
First Gold Award Achieved in Lean Green Belt SCM
Colm Rochford, Plant Manager with American Power Conversion,
became the first participant to achieve a Gold Award in our Lean Green Belt SCM Certification program. We would like to use this opportunity to congratulate Colm on such an excellent achievement. To read Colm's feedback on the program, please click here
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| October 2006 |
19th Annual Society for Health Systems Conference |
The 19th Annual Society for Health Systems Conference will take place in New Orleans, Louisiana on February 23 - 24, 2007 with a Post-Conference Workshop on February 25th. This year’s conference theme, “Improving Patient Flow and Access – Across the Continuum of Care”, was chosen to address a range of the most pressing issues facing Administrators, Physicians, Clinical Leaders, and Clinicians and their performance improvement partners working in healthcare.
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IIE National Conference
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The Irish Institute of Industrial Engineers' Annual Conference will be held in The Mount Lyrath Hotel, Kilkenny on Wednesday October 18th 2006. The theme of the Conference will be 'Productivity - Ireland's Key Economic Challenge'. For further information, please click
here.
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| August 2006 |
| New Lean Training Initiative –
ACCEL / ICBE |
| The Leading Edge Group now
offers a new Lean Training Initiative - specifically Lean Yellow
Belt and Lean Green Belt Certification programs - that qualify
under the new ICBE Accel Project (www.icbe.ie). ACCEL is a new
in-company training initiative aimed at accelerating skills
of people at all levels within firms in Ireland. The Irish Centre
for Business Excellence (ICBE) has partnered with ACCEL to promote
a series of training programs to Irish industry for the period
2006–2008.This ICBE/ACCEL project is funded by member
companies, the European Social Fund, and the National Development
Plan. Part Funding is available under this initiative for companies
interested in empowering their staff in Lean Thinking. If
you would like to get further information on the above initiative,
please contact Joe Aherne on 021 4855863 or email jaherne@leadingedge.ie
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| July 2006 |
| Leading Edge Group and University College
Cork offer a Continuous Professional Certificate in Lean Supply
Chain Management (Green Belt) |
| University College Cork (UCC),
in conjunction with the Leading Edge Group and the Irish Institute
of Industrial Engineers (IIE), is offering a part-time Continuing
Professional Development Certificate in Lean Supply Chain Management
(Green Belt) program, commencing in October 2006. Students who
complete the Continuing Professional Development Certificate
will also receive a certificate from the Irish Institute of
Industrial Engineers and will receive Level 6 academic credits
under the National Framework of Qualifications. They can then
choose to undertake UCC’s Certificate in Supply Chain
management that runs from February 2007 through to May 2007.
Completion of both programs will in turn provide exemptions
for UCC’s Diploma in Supply Chain Management. |
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| Leading Edge Group Working with National
College of Ireland to achieve Academic Accreditation for Lean
Green Belt |
| The Leading Edge Group is to
collaborate closely with the National College of Ireland (NCI)
to gain academic accreditation for its Lean Green Belt Certification
programs. This will enable students who successfully complete
any of the programs to gain a number of Level 6 academic credits
under the National Framework of Qualifications. These credits
can be used to gain exemptions on higher-level courses, and
are transparent, comparable and compatible internationally,
thus enabling learners to move easily between different education
and training systems, using their qualifications for employment
in other countries. |
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| May 2006 |
| First Irish
Lean Healthcare Conference
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Our Lean
Healthcare certification program is continuing to attract
widespread support in the USA, Australia, and mainland Europe.
Due to member demand, we have recently decided to host the
first Irish Lean Healthcare conference in October 2006. We
are currently working on speakers for the conference, and
will update the site with any developments over the coming
weeks. |
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| On-line Learning
Community
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We have recently surveyed our existing students on the
quality, service, and content of our certification programs.
A common request among all students was to facilitate an
on-line learning community for to enable meaningful discussions
on the approaches adopted by different organizations in
the implementation of Lean initiatives. We are currently
working on developing this community.
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| April
2006 |
| Academic Accreditation
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The Leading Edge Group is working with a number of academic
institutions to secure European academic credits for our
Lean Green Belt certification programs. These credits are
recognized as part of the European Credit Transfer System
(ECTS).
This will enable any student in an EU member state to apply
their Lean credits gained through completion of one of our
Lean Green Belt certification program against recognized
degree and post -graduate programs offered in another EU
state. We are estimating that this process will be completed
in Quarter 4 of this year. The next stage in this process
will be to look for reciprocal arrangements for US and Canadian
students.
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| March
2006 |
Joe Aherne, Managing Director of the Leading Edge Group,
recently published an article on Lean Healthcare for the
Lean division of the Institute of Industrial Engineers.
The article is titled ‘Power of Lean Healthcare’
and is available in our Resources section.
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