PRINCIPLE 5 OF THE TOYOTA WAY
During a consultation in the past, I have mentioned a few times the way that I see quality hair restoration as analogous to building a car. The quality of the car is directly proportional to every step in the process. There can be not one small component that does not work otherwise the result is less than stellar. That is the reason that I keep my production numbers down to 2 to 3 cases a week but I perform those cases almost every single week to maintain proficiency and so that I don’t need ever to outsource staff coming in. All staff members are with me full time all the time and don’t burn out. I shall be talking about corporate culture in Vegas in 2 weeks and I believe that if every staff member is empowered with the sense of mission, values, and passion, they will perform like the leader.
I like to cite Principle 5 of 14 from the book, The Toyota Way, which is how we run our hair transplant procedures. Here it is: “Build a culture of stopping to fix problems, to get quality right the first time. Any employee in the Toyota Production System has the authority to stop the process to signal a quality issue.” That means during the production of a car, if the guy sweeping the floor sees a problem, he stops production of the entire car manufacturing process so that there is immediate stop of continuing problems that can have larger and larger ramifications on quality.
Every worker during a hair transplant knows that if there is the slightest problem during the work, that problem is reported upward and everything stops until we can see what the issue is. As example, I perform 4 to 5 recipient sites, then Emina comes in and checks that the grafts that she is making fits my sites. If not, what she is doing stops, the girls stop, and everything stops until we are certain that the grafts fit the sites. That is why no one works in a separate vacuum environment. All graft cutters sit next to me. That level of quality goes back and forth as a dynamic environment from beginning to the end of the case. That is a commitment level of continuous quality improvement (CQI) that is rarely exercised in today’s “factory mentality” when it comes to hair restoration even in the top transplant surgeons out there.