Lean concepts were developed by Toyota to optimize the cost of their manufacturing operations over 30 years ago.   These lean concepts began to take root in the U.S. in the 1980’s and are now widespread in US manufacturing operations.  The results of implementing lean concepts in operations typically large improvements in capacity increase, lead time reduction and error reduction in the 30-50% range!

In the early 90’s, these  same lean concepts began to be applied to office environments such as call centers, customer service centers, transaction processing operations and insurance claims processing, with equally impressive improvement results. 

Most recently, in the late 90’s, lean concepts started to be applied to medical and other health operations driven by the need to reduce medical costs.  The Mayo clinic was one of the first medical operations that developed the application of lean in a medical environment.  The improvements were again in the same 30-50% range.

The first application of lean in a dental operation appears to have been started in the late 90’s by Dr. Sami Bahri in his Jacksonville, Florida, practice.  Dr. Bahri taught himself the entire field of Lean concepts through reading and self study, so his more intensive application of lean practices began in the early 2000’s.  By 2008, his practice has achieved a 40% improvement in lead time and cost, while the Dentists in the practice have increased their time available by 82%!