Improving the ER on "ER"
YouTube – Improving the ER on ER I don’t always watch the NBC show ER, but this portion caught my attention when my wife was watching the final episode of the season and I clumsily taped it with my digital…
Year 2007
Interesting Toyota Corporate History
Toyota Motor Corp.: Information from Answers.com Left: Banner that reads “Good Thinking, Good Products” (Toyota, circa early 1950’s, source: Toyota) Here’s a fairly complete seeming Toyota company history, including a few interesting tidbits: Although its profits declined substantially during the…
Don’t Look for "Lean" in the PC Industry
How H-P Reclaimed Its PC Lead Over Dell – WSJ.com Today’s WSJ article doesn’t focus on the Dell layoffs (although it does mention them, as did the Evolving Excellence blog post on the layoffs), but rather the competitive dynamics between…
Quality Systems & Innovation
By Mike R. Lopez: The June 11, 2007 issue of BusinessWeek features a great story about 3M’s recent problems with Six Sigma, “At 3M, A Struggle Between Efficiency And Creativity.” As a Lean Six Sigma black belt at my company,…
Step 1: Anger Employees, Step 2: Mollify Them
Northwest Air, Out of Chapter 11, Aims to Mollify Customers, Labor – WSJ.com Mollify (v): to soften in feeling or temper, as a person; pacify; appease. I don’t understand airline management at all. Airlines, in general, seem to be one…
Embracing Problems at Google
In David Mann’s book, Creating A Lean Culture: Tools To Sustain Lean Conversions, he talks about the need to “embrace problems” as a key step in creating a continuous improvement culture (as opposed to the normal business habit of hiding…
Nissan’s Mock Assembly Lines
Mock Assembly Lines Work Out Glitches: Financial News – Yahoo! Finance Nissan has struggled with quality (particularly in their Mississippi plant), so they are taking some dramatic steps to improve their handoff and collaboration between design and production with a…
LeanBlog Podcast #26 – Dr. Gwendolyn Galsworth on Visual Workplace and Visual Thinking
Listen: Episode #26 of the LeanBlog Podcast brings us Dr. Gwendolyn Galsworth, of the Visual Lean Institute. She is the author, most recently of the book Visual Workplace, Visual Thinking: Creating Enterprise Excellence Through the Technologies of the Visual Workplace.…
The Growing Patient Safety Movement
The Informed Patient – WSJ.com This article from the WSJ talks about a trend where patients (or, more often, family members of patients) who were injured or killed by medical mistakes are dedicating their lives to improving patient safety for…
In Search of the Best MRP Manufacturers
By Mark Edmondson, Lean Affilliates Lean Blog readers – I need your input. I’m looking for the best performing manufacturing companies who use MRP to signal delivery from their suppliers. In other words, who are the top performing manufacturing companies…
Lean and Economic Development
JS Online: Editorial: A new way of thinking: Wisconsin is mentioned frequently here on the Lean Blog, with many small and mid-sized companies, in particular, getting great benefits from Lean (such as this case). Now, the Milwaukee newspaper is promoting…
Global Lean Healthcare Summit – 2007
Lean Enterprise Academy > The First Global Lean Healthcare Summit – 2007 I’m very fortunate to be attending this conference, sponsored and run by Dan Jones, of Lean Thinking and Lean Solutions fame. Are any of my readers also attending?…