Arnout Orelio

In the first 10 years after his engineering studies, Arnout Orelio, was a production and project manager in the automotive industry, and later a Lean consultant, with no clear purpose in life.  

Until he became a father … 

He has three great sons, but yes … with such wild brats you sometimes visit a hospital. Like that time when his middle son had broken his leg between the spokes of his bicycle. Upon arrival at the emergency room, with his son in excruciating pain, he was amazed at the lack of clarity. 

“Where were we supposed to go? How long would it take? Will my son be okay?!” It gave him a headache and stomach ache, and he wasn’t even the patient. 

“Surely we can do better than that, when caring for people,” he thought.

Since then, he has focused on helping healthcare providers improve their work, leadership and organization for their patients, because he has seen and experienced, how frustrating working in healthcare can be, because of the broken systems people are working in.

Therefore, Arnout Orelio became the first, fully dedicated Dutch “Lean Thinker” in health care.

He now has over 30 years of experience with leadership and process improvement in the workplace, including 20+ years in healthcare. He has helped hundreds of physicians, nursing team leaders and managers make health care safe, compassionate, and efficient, by removing waste and struggles.

He shares his long-standing experience with as many people as possible, through his books, inspiration sessions and 1:1 mentoring.

We chose Arnout because of his deep-seated drive to improve health care. He taught us to be self-reliant problem solvers. How? By asking many questions (why, why, why, why, …) and constantly challenging us. One of the many results has been a 40% increase in productivity. We now help many more, more complex patients, without employing additional staff, while employee satisfaction rose from sub-par to a 7+.
Thed Naber, Director Operations at a radiotherapeutic institute.