Embracing just-in-time principles

Sophisticated sensors and software platforms have made it possible to deliver high-performing buildings.

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In the early 1950s, Toyota developed the practice of just-in-time (JIT) manufacturing. JIT eliminates waste, improves quality, increases efficiency and enhances agility by enabling demand to dictate supply.

A retailer using this model, for example, understands both their suppliers and their consumers so well that they can have stock on hand for customers right when they need it, and no sooner. JIT is a concept that has revolutionized manufacturing, logistics and retail over the past 70 years, and the time has come for health care organizations to embrace it.

The problem is that implementing JIT requires both timely and accurate information and the commitment and cooperation of every stakeholder involved in the provision of a product. That is relatively simple to do when there are a limited set of data points. If a company knows that demand for a product is likely to spike in December and the product takes a month to manufacture and ship, ramping up production in October is a no-brainer.

But when they are supplying several products to thousands of delivery points for a consumer whose needs can fluctuate by the minute, collecting, managing and acting on the resulting data is more difficult. Such is the challenge faced by medical buildings in applying a JIT mindset to delivering comfortable, functional and productive workplaces. Only recently has technology, including workplace management solutions, advanced to the point where this is even feasible.

Applying JIT to buildings

Sophisticated sensors and software platforms have made it possible to reduce inefficiencies and costs, support sustainability initiatives, increase efficiency and provide superior insights to deliver high-performing buildings for occupants based on what they need and when they need it.

Applying the tenets of JIT to medical building operations can be most impactful in the following four key areas:

Light, water and climate control. It is no longer sufficient simply to supply a building’s occupants with light, water and climate control. Staff today understand how, when and where those amenities can contribute to climate change and impact their well-being and productivity. That awareness, in turn, has made how lights work, toilets flush and air conditioning functions a factor in recruitment and retention. Facilities managers can deliver these basic but essential resources in a way that checks all these boxes while reducing costs by using automation to make them available just when they are needed.

The first step in automating the provision of light, water and climate control is to install the appropriate sensors. Workplace occupancy sensors can detect environmental conditions like light, temperature, humidity, noise and carbon dioxide levels. Because these sensors reveal real-time environmental and occupancy data, organizations can use this level of data in conjunction with building management system and building automation system (BAS) integrations to optimize energy usage.

For example, these systems can turn off the lights in parts of the building that are unoccupied or increase airflow to meeting rooms or certain levels of a building on days and times that consistently show higher levels of occupancy. They can even be used with automated shading systems to alleviate solar heat gain.

Modern BASs provide an enormous amount of data to facilities teams about their operations. Sensor-based technologies, such as smart meters, can be attached to building assets, from rooftop chillers to printers, allowing organizations to track the performance of equipment and gain insights into their energy consumption over time.

While many smart building systems focus on realizing energy savings, water also costs money, and its conservation is an important element in any sustainability initiative. With the help of smart water sensors and meters, BASs also can monitor and control water waste and leakage in restrooms; kitchens; heating, ventilating and air-conditioning equipment; and irrigation systems.

Optimizing the delivery of climate control, water and light is a win-win for the organization and building occupants. Providing the right amount of these resources in the right places and at the right times not only reduces costs and waste but also increases productivity by making the building healthier and more inviting for staff, patients and families.

It also enhances sustainability by decreasing energy and water usage. Finally, using automation to control the provision of light, water and climate control boosts talent recruitment and retention by enabling organizations to tout their commitment to sustainability efforts and climate-aware policies.

Space management. Many organizations have turned to hybrid work arrangements for office employees so they can work in ways that are most effective for them and, ultimately, create a culture of increased employee satisfaction, productivity and overall retention.

In doing so, organizations prioritize optimizing their workplaces to match the way their people work best while identifying and eliminating unnecessary costs. One way to achieve these objectives is to ensure employees and teams who need specific types of space can access them easily when needed.

Applying JIT principles to optimizing office space utilization starts with using reliable space management systems and occupancy sensors to automatically monitor desks, meeting rooms and office floor areas. The data gathered from these sensors, including percentage overcapacity, occupancy and room usage, can be integrated with other smart office systems, like workplace scheduling.

Desk booking systems enable easy implementation of hot desking for better office space utilization, while meeting room booking systems automatically alert employees when rooms are vacant and available for use. Some room booking solutions even show users what a room looks like and what amenities it offers.

Occupancy sensors also can help managers optimize spaces for specific purposes, like ideation, collaboration and culture-building activities. When combined with digital twin technology, which uses data to create virtual representations of spaces, assets, systems or processes, they empower stakeholders to make decisions about the workplace — and uncover cost-reduction opportunities — based on the way people use the space.

Maintenance. Digital twins also allow health care facilities managers to reduce the cost, downtime and disruption of building and equipment maintenance. Because digital twins provide robust data on all assets, equipment and systems that comprise a building, facilities managers can predict when and where maintenance issues are likely to occur. This enables health care facilities managers to respond to maintenance issues more efficiently while facilitating preventive maintenance tasks.

Not only can digital twin solutions signal facilities managers to the need for intervention, but they also can schedule maintenance with the appropriate team, provide relevant documentation and alert if any special requirements are needed for the specific job. By keeping track of when components are likely to need maintenance and using digital twins to inform maintenance schedules, facilities managers can avoid both the cost and inefficiency of overservicing and the loss of use and productivity of underservicing.

This JIT approach to maintenance reduces downtime, costs and waste while increasing the projected lifetime of the equipment, assets and building.

While digital twins predict the need for maintenance based on simulations, sensors can provide a JIT warning of emergent problems based on the performance of the actual asset. Sensors measuring the presence of electrical charge or water, vibration, high-frequency sounds, pressure and temperature can alert facilities managers to potential issues and provide clues as to what the problem might be.

Visitor access. When the process of welcoming visitors to a building is inefficient, it can lead to higher costs in the form of lost productivity and increased security and liability risk. It can even damage a visitor’s perception of an organization, potentially impacting partnership opportunities and employee acquisition. A visitor management system (VMS) can address these concerns by automating tasks that take place in every visitor interaction and, in doing so, guarantee that everyone has the information they need, when they need it.

Staff, patients and families appreciate an organization that values their time and embraces cutting-edge technology to operate more effectively and efficiently. In addition to saving time and money and improving productivity, a VMS can improve health and safety and legal compliance while reducing risk.

Obviously, they also can be used to deny entry to certain individuals. But the check-in process can be customized to require visitors to certify their compliance with government or organizational protocols before they enter the building.

Selecting a solution

Deploying a JIT approach to building space and portfolio optimization requires selecting an integrated workplace management solution (IWMS) that can effectively centralize the functions underpinned by data-gathering devices, giving facilities management teams a complete, end-to-end view of their buildings, equipment and assets.

Health care facilities managers should look for an IWMS that is scalable and flexible. Systems that are intended to help organizations make better decisions about changes are not worth much if they are no longer usable once decisions have been made. A reliable IWMS will provide space planning for managing existing and future space needs, as well as effectively provide maintenance and asset management insights across a real estate portfolio.

Heavy customization of a workplace management system can result in the system producing inconsistencies and user errors, so it is a good idea to choose a system that is compatible with a broad range of technologies.

Finally, the best workplace management systems have a user-friendly, intuitive design. A poor design, confusing interface and frustrating user experience can end up discouraging the facilities and space planning teams from using the system altogether.

Agility is key

For decades, organizations did not embrace JIT methodology because building occupants were on longer-term leases and maintained consistent and predictable schedules. Turning the lights on when workers arrived in the morning and off when they left at night was sufficient to meet their needs without too much concern for waste or expense. The pandemic-driven explosion in remote working and subsequent adoption of hybrid work models changed all that.

Organizations have had to rethink the role of office space through changing employee preferences and priorities, which brings new dimensions to what it means to manage buildings. This growing complexity of building portfolios and need for specialized expertise has made facilities management a core part of business models across industries.

Return on investment still reigns supreme, and uncertainty around work models and turmoil in the wider economy have made saving money more important than ever. Raleigh, N.C.-based FM:Systems’ 2022 Refocus and Rationalize the Workplace survey of 450 United States business leaders revealed that reducing expenses was the top priority for 43% of respondents. But the same survey showed that three out of four leaders felt they lacked reliable space and utilization data on which to make informed decisions.

If there is one thing the past three years have taught organizations, it is that agility is the key to being ready for both unexpected and foreseeable events. But this approach requires information. Health care facilities managers can help bridge that gap, bringing added value to their organizations by helping them understand the benefits of providing just what they need and just when they need it.

A JIT strategy provides facilities management teams with a framework for maintaining that focus on the bottom line while meeting the evolving needs of building occupants and other stakeholders. 

Related article // Taking just-in-time further by utilizing Lean methodology

Just-in-time (JIT) isn’t the only manufacturing principle developed by Toyota that can be applied by health care facilities managers to increase efficiency, reduce costs and improve patient satisfaction. The automaker also developed the Lean approach to manufacturing, which is like JIT but expands the scope of optimization beyond the factory floor and supply chain.

If the focus of JIT is on supplying just enough of a product to meet demand over time, Lean methodology looks at the other components of customer value beyond availability. Lean principles dictate that every step in the production process must contribute to that value; everything else is wasted money, material, time, effort, energy and information.

So, what can health care facilities managers learn from Lean methodology, and how can technology help them apply those lessons? Lean’s focus on eliminating waste is accelerating its adoption by health systems as they look for ways to cut costs and support sustainability initiatives. It’s also a useful approach in a field that’s seeing increased competition and regulation.

Every health care facilities manager strives to operate a clean, secure building with minimal disruption to the occupants, but in the health care sector, maintaining that standard can be a matter of life or death. Fortunately, smart building technologies like sensors, digital twin solutions and workplace management systems were made to increase efficiency, reduce costs and decrease waste of all kinds. Examples include:

• Environmental sensors can be deployed to automate lighting and ventilation systems so that they operate — and consume energy — only when needed. Taking that functionality one step further, some sensor systems allow users to adjust the temperature and fan speed in a specific room or change the tone and intensity of lighting.
• Digital twin solutions run virtual copies of real-world equipment to predict when maintenance or replacement might be required. Armed with this information, health care facilities managers can plan maintenance checks when they’re actually needed, not just based on an arbitrary schedule. This, in turn, helps prevent unforeseen outages and equipment failures. A Lean add-on is the ability to incorporate generative artificial intelligence into the digital twin system so that the system alerts maintenance teams of an impending problem directly.
• Workplace management systems are used to aggregate information from multiple systems into a single interface. For example, a workplace management solution can give health care facilities managers on-demand access to employee attendance, space utilization and indoor air quality data. The best systems, however, allow for additional components, sensors and systems to be added seamlessly as the user’s needs evolve.

Smart building technology is advancing rapidly and becoming more and more capable of supporting Lean and JIT principles in health care facilities management. Organizations looking for ways to support sustainability initiatives and comply with greenhouse gas reporting laws should give JIT and Lean serious consideration. 

About this article

This article is part of an exchange agreement between the American Society for Health Care Engineering and the International Facility Management Association, which ran an earlier version in its Facility Management Journal.

Brian Haines is chief strategy officer at FM:Systems, headquartered in Raleigh, N.C. He can be reached at bhaines@fmsystems.com.