A Virtual Japan Lean Tour
I know a lot of you also read Ron Pereira’s Lean Six Sigma Academy blog, but I wanted to make sure you see his outstanding series of posts about his trip (led by our friends at Gemba Research). Harmony and…
Month March 2008
Dallas Lean Networking
Some of you might remember me advertising a “Lean Lunch” gathering here in the Dallas area. Well, we had that yesterday, with some great discussion and networking about Lean. We had four different industries represented, but it goes to show…
The Waste of Handwritten Notes
Nurse + Blog = PixelRN: 16% of the US economy runs on scrawly, handwritten notes. PixelRN is a blog written by a nurse (who is unfortunately considering leaving the field). She writes about the problems involved with handwritten orders, charts,…
Lean *is* About Quality, Folks
Time for a low-carb Lean Six Sigma?: Stuff like this irritates me to no end: “Lean Manufacturing has us analyzing process flow and delay times at each activity within a process. And while Lean Manufacturing principles help speed things up,…
A Lean Nursing Example in New Zealand
Hospital’s shake-up gives nurses more time Here’s a nice news article about the use of Lean in a hospital in New Zealand (hat tip to Michael for sending it to me). Middlemore Hospital is the first in the country to…
Learning from Restaurants
Cutback Cuisine – WSJ.com: If you’re a regular reader, you know I like to try to draw from non-traditional sources and industries. This article from WSJ caught my eye and made me think of some Lean concepts. As in many…
A Virtual Toy Drive for Children’s Hospitals
I am currently doing some Lean coaching and implementation work in the radiology department of a large children’s hospital. One thing I have discovered is that kids often have to lay in an MRI machine for long periods of time.…
Reader Question: Model Lines
I received a question from a reader that was also addressed on the Daily Kaizen blog and Gemba Panta Rei. This question is from a hospital setting, but I think it’s a good general Lean question: One our our struggles…
Bob Emiliani on Practical Lean Leadership – LeanBlog Podcast #38
Here is LeanBlog Podcast #38, our guest today is Bob Emiliani, the author of Practical Lean Leadership: A Strategic Leadership Guide For Executives. It’s a workbook-style guide that forces you to think through your own leadership approach and your own…
Clearing Out the LeanBlog Backlog
Sometimes, I have a collection of news stories or links that I either don’t have time to blog about, assume you don’t have time to read about, or don’t really merit a full blog post. So my “WIP” of “draft”…
K-12 Lean
Lean is very prevalent in manufacturing because manufacturing needs so much help. Jobs are being lost and profits and struggling, and so lean is one lever people try to pull to salvage the situation. Now that the healthcare industry is…
John Boyd, Lean Fighter Pilot Part II
Harry Hillaker–Father of the F-16 Toyota’s Value Innovation: The Art of Tension Mark has written before about “Everyday Lean“, those little examples of error-proofing or kanban or flow that we see in our day-to-day lives. In a similar vein, one…
