What happens when a mistake is made in your organization? How do you react when an error occurs? A lab specimen gets mislabeled. The wrong product is shipped to the wrong customer. A patient is injected with the wrong medication. These are moments that matter. Does emotion take over or do we stay calm? How […]

I made this short three-minute video for KaiNexus where I try to succinctly answer the question, “What is Kaizen?” Click the thumbnail below to view the video and/or to read the transcript: Please leave a comment on the KaiNexus website, or here on this blog post, and let us know what you think. What is the […]

Today’s post is being hosted by the Lean Enterprise Institute and their “Lean Post” blog… click on the headline below or the image to read: “Standardization is a Countermeasure, Never the Goal“ It’s a post that encourages people to “ask why” when thinking about standardized work, 5S, and other Lean practices. Instead of thinking “what […]

MP3 File (run time 32:43) Episode #205 is a conversation with Joe Schnur, VP Business Development at Intelligent M, a company that “designs data-driven hand hygiene compliance  improvement solutions for hospitals that dramatically reduce healthcare-acquired infections and their associated costs.” Joe and I share a passion for improving patient safety and we’ve had a number of […]

MP3 File (run time 34:37) Joining me today for Episode #204 is Paul Plsek (@PaulPlsek) and we’re talking about his excellent book (a Shingo Research Award recipient this year) titled Accelerating Health Care Transformation with Lean and Innovation: The Virginia Mason Experience. Virginia Mason, of course, is Virginia Mason Medical Center, the outstanding Lean organization […]

MP3 File (run time 40:21)  | Listen via YouTube Read the transcript My guest for Episode #203 (and an upcoming Part 2) is Chris Jerry, founder of The Emily Jerry Foundation.  The foundation was created in the aftermath of the tragic death of his daughter, Emily - a preventable medical error caused by a number of factors and […]

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. About LeanBlog.org: Mark Graban is a consultant, author, and speaker in the “lean healthcare” methodology. Mark is […]

This video contains clips of a talk I gave at the University of Michigan Health System in early 2014. About LeanBlog.org: Mark Graban is a consultant, author, and speaker in the “lean healthcare” methodology. Mark is author of the Shingo Award-winning books Lean Hospitals and Healthcare Kaizen, as well as the new Executive Guide to […]

We all know the beaver is “the engineer of the animal kingdom.” That’s why MIT has a beaver as a mascot… it’s an engineer who likes to build things and is generally nocturnal, an apt description of MIT students. A survey taken by the National Geographic Society has found that the owl, however, is the […]

“Weird Al” Yanokvic skewers corporate buzzwords in this new song and music video. He also skewers the now-tired “hand writing on a white board” style of corporate videos, which I think is even more brilliant of him. There are a few somewhat Lean-related buzzwords in the video… the last one looks like it has PDSA […]

I was happy to see this article in FORTUNE’s recent issue: “Brad Smith, Intuit CEO: How To Be A Great Leader: Get Out Of The Way.” Smith (@IntuitBrad) talks about the Lean Startup concept often called “getting out of the office” to see how customers live and work.  Toyota would call this “Genchi Genbutsu” (go […]