Tag: Problem Solving

"The way we've always done it" doesn't mean that's the right way or the best way to do something. One of my daily habits is...

Please join us on May 16, as KaiNexus and I host a webinar presented by a leader from one of our customers -- Chad...

Mark's Note: I've known Ryan McCormack for many years now, thanks to his previous work in Lean healthcare and his attendance at Lean Healthcare...

My guest for Episode #324 of the podcast is Art Smalley. Art was one of the first Americans to work for Toyota Motor Corporation in Japan and, since then, has been helping other organizations with the Toyota Production System (a.k.a. "Lean") methods and approaches. You can also visit his website to learn more, www.ArtOfLean.com. Art is a fellow faculty member at the Lean Enterprise Institute. He has written two Shingo Publication Award-winning books: Creating Level Pull and (co-authored with Durward Sobek) Understanding A3 Thinking. Art later wrote Toyota's Kaizen Methods: Six Steps to Improvement with Isao Kato. I own all of these books and have only met Art briefly in the past, so I'm happy to finally have him here as a guest. Today, we'll talk about Art's career and his most recent book, Four Types of Problems, published by the Lean Enterprise Institute (note: LEI provided me a free electronic copy of the book).

Today's post is some material that I wrote for my book Measures of Success but cut due to length. I've modified the material a bit to hopefully be fine as a standalone post. There's a somewhat humorous, if not scary, story from a book (This is Going to Hurt) written by a former "junior doctor" in the British National Health Services (NHS) -- the equivalent of a "resident" in the American medical education system.

Back on the podcast for the fifth time is my friend David Meier, a Lean / TPS consultant who is a former Toyota leader at their plant in Georgetown, Kentucky. He's gotten into what's, perhaps, the most Kentucky of industries... distilling bourbon (and more). I'll have two more podcast episodes where David and I talk about bourbon, whiskey, and continuous improvement for almost 90 minutes total there. Those episodes are coming soon. Today is a shorter episode, where we catch up and hear more about what David has been doing since his last podcast appearance in 2010 when we talked about the challenges Toyota was facing then. In this episode, David drops a lot of knowledge and wisdom in a very short time -- thoughts on problem solving and how Lean thinking isn't easy for anybody, even if you're Japanese.

Today's post is the first contribution from Shrikant Kalegaonkar, a frequent commenter here on the blog, LinkedIn, and Twitter. We had a chance to meet in Austin last year and I appreciate his shared interests in Lean, statistical process control (ala Deming and Wheeler), and quality improvement. He initiated this piece and I ended up collaborating with him on it. I hope it sparks some healthy discussion...

If this post is a bit of a rant, I apologize. The problems here are avoidable and fixable. That's one reason I get so...

Hear Mark read the post (subscribe to the podcast): This is an elaboration on something I originally posted on LinkedIn. I saw somebody touting an approach that...

The mistakes at The Oscars were trivial and unimportant in the grand scheme of things. What are some lessons learned that apply to improving healthcare supply chains?

Alternative headline: “Poorly Designed Card Trips Up Beatty and Dunaway at The Oscars.” Or “A Bad Process Beats Warren Beatty Every Time.” What are the Lean lessons from this mistake?

Hear Mark read the post (subscribe to the podcast series): I don't normally pay too much attention to TV commercials, but I was working out...