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. […]

Today is another “Throwback Thursday” post where I revisit posts from the past. Friday and Saturday, I’m going to be attending the “Patient Safety, Science & Technology Summit” in Irvine, California. I won’t be speaking, but I’ll be participating and networking in my role as a board member for the Louise H. Batz Patient Safety Foundation, […]

I’ve been overdue in writing more posts about 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. It’s always fascinating to visit a Toyota plant and it’s even more so to visit with healthcare professionals. […]

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 […]

A friend sent me a link to this article, “7 cultural concepts we don’t have in the U.S.,” and he told me to check out item #5 in the list – Kaizen in Japan. By the way, if you ever see articles that you think I might want to read or blog about, contact me […]

First, here’s a look back at my post from 2012 commemorating the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Let’s all be respectful, fair, and just in the work that we do. And see this image and quote from 2013. And my friend Jon Miller has a better collection of MLK quotes here. Today’s post is […]

Here’s a new batch, a third installment of “Key Tweets,” a post that summarizes some of my tweets (or retweets) from the week. Follow me @MarkGraban. See the first installments here. If you’re reading this via email or RSS, you might get a better experience by clicking through to the website because it will display article link […]