My wife and I were late to the wildly popular podcast “Serial,” but we listened to the first six episodes while traveling over the holidays. I ran hot and cold on the serialized non-fiction story about a murder… it was somewhat interesting, but a bit drawn out. The show requires a lot of patience (and […]

Last weekend, at a patient safety conference, I heard a physician from the Joint Commission talk about “robust process improvement” and this, thankfully, included an endorsement of Lean methods. That’s the good news. The bad news was that the physician who was presenting trotted out a tired and incorrect framing of Lean and Six Sigma, […]

I’m honored to have been interviewed by Dr. Robert Wachter for his “Web M&M” interview series on the AHRQ website. In Conversation with…Mark Graban, MS, MBA Dr. Wachter is a leader in the patient safety movement who I’ve respected and admired for quite a while. You can read his “Wachter’s World” blog and his book Understanding […]

MP3 File (run time 11.24) Today’s podcast is different than my usual interview format. I still plan on continuing the podcast format and series, but I also wanted to try something new. I’m starting a “Lean Blog Audio” podcast, which is basically an “audio book” type reading of blog posts. I won’t do it for all […]

MP3 File (run time 51:25) Today’s guest is David Mann (bio), talking about the new 3rd edition of his Shingo Research Award winning book Creating a Lean Culture. David tells us what’s new in the book and we discuss “leader standard work” and other elements of a Lean culture. David also talks about the difference between “Lean […]

MP3 File (run time 52:10) Normally, my podcast is all about my guests. This episode has me being interviewed by the hosts at Healthcare Tech Talk, a new podcast for Healthcare IS professionals. This originally appeared as episode #23 of their series. Thanks to hosts Terry Baker and Kelley Hill for interviewing me and for allowing […]

Here is a 10-minute talk I gave at the 2014 Lean Transformation Summit. I’m introduced by Jim Womack and we do Q&A at the end. Looking at your own organization today, do you hold yourself back by making excuses or do you get creative and find new ways of doing things? Many organizations aspire to […]

In this video, I talk about the use of Lean thinking in hospital facility design. The talk is given in the “Ignite” format, where you have five minutes and the slides automatically advance every 15 seconds on you. Some of the themes include the parallels between “Lean Startup” thinking and “Lean Design” for hospitals. Both […]

This video contains clips of a talk I gave at the University of Michigan Health System in early 2014. I cover some basics about the Kaizen approach to continuous improvement and how that fits into the “A3″ problem solving model that is used widely at UMHS and other organizations. About LeanBlog.org: Mark Graban is a […]

Last week, I wrote a post (part 1) looking back  at our visit to the Toyota Tsutsumi factory that was part of our Japan tour that took place two months ago now. See previous posts in this series. I’m going to try to do one post a week on this topic. If you’re in San Francisco, I’m giving […]

Tomorrow afternoon, I’m doing two different webinars that I hope you’ll want to sign up for. Even if you can’t attend live, I’d encourage you to register in advance so you can get links sent to you automatically to view these on demand. Both webinars will be recorded and links will be sent out to those who registered. […]

Today and tomorrow, I’m attending the “Patient Safety, Science & Technology Summit” in Irvine, California, as part of my role as a board member for the Louise H. Batz Patient Safety Foundation. I’m taking notes via Twitter and I will post some below. The conference hashtag is #PSSTS. I’ll  update this post occasionally over the next few days. […]