All posts from Mark Graban’s LeanBlog.org, including podcasts, announcements, articles, and more.
Today, I'd like to share the latest in my series of articles about "Champions of Change," which is based on a discussion I had with Joe Swartz about continuous improvement in materials and supply chain settings.
Today, I'd like to share the latest in my series of articles about "Champions of Change," which is based on a discussion I had with Suzi Collins, an experienced Lean healthcare supply chain leader.
Monday, I blogged about the sushi-making class I took on my last Sunday in Japan. Later that same Sunday, I did a walking food tour in the Shibuya area. Walking food tours are a great way to explore and learn about a city.
In our small group, there was a couple from Australia and a retired couple from South Africa.
Between stops on the tour, the South African gentleman, a retired mining company manager or executive, asked me why I was there in Japan for work.
I’ve heard a lot of rumblings recently about what might be happening at ThedaCare, a health system in Wisconsin that’s been considered one of the best examples of "Lean healthcare" anywhere in the world for more than a decade. It seems that there is an evolution occurring in their approach to Lean.
I’ve received a formal statement from ThedaCare public relations, which you can find in this post, so I will stick to the facts that they have given me and other information that's publicly available online.
Last week, I got back from my third trip to Japan and we visited three hospitals, Toyota, another manufacturer, and heard from a cafeteria services company leader about their Lean and continuous improvement journeys. As I've blogged about before, some of these organizations have been practicing TQM for 30 years and are adding elements of Lean methods on top of that foundation.
I'm hardly an expert on Japan. I still feel like I view the country with fresh eyes.
Standards and Standardized Work... at Work
During this trip, I heard a number of people talk about the cultural imperative about following rules and laws. In the workplace, we might call these rules "standardized work"...
I sometimes try to share some light or funny on Fridays to get into the weekend with a laugh.
I want to thank @BrianSJ on Twitter for his tweet pointing me to a hilarious video from a British TV show "That Mitchell and Webb Look."
As I blogged about yesterday, things went well at the Oscars... or, at least, no errors were made in the announcements. But that thing that didn't go well was the TV ratings.
Two Data Points Are Not a Trend
The headlines I saw had a lot of two-data-point comparisons. Headlines sometimes gave the percentage decrease in viewers or how many million fewer viewers there were. Many talked about "record low" but if you're tracking a metric "record low" or "all-time high" doesn't mean there's a "special cause." That "record low" could still be noise in the system.
Tomorrow, my post will be about headlines that scream about ratings for The Oscars being "down from last year" or "the lowest in X years." As I've blogged about before, I'm always skeptical of such simplistic comparisons that might mask the real underlying trend.
But first, could the Academy avoid last year's embarrassing mixup?
Here's an interesting Bloomberg article about Toyota never being satisfied, which includes improving the way they improve:
"Toyota's Way Changed the World's Factories. Now the Retool"
Did you know that Toyota has a central TPS group??
I did manage to buy a book that was published by NUMMI to celebrate their 10th anniversary. "10 Years of Quality & Teamwork" is the title.
Here is the cover and I'll share a few things that caught my attention inside. It's interesting to think through this book in the context of :
Tesla (the current owners of the building - see my past blog post)
Healthcare organizations
Konnichiwa from Japan! I am having a great time with my friends from Kaizen Institute and our tour attendees. I wrote a post on Monday, but I never expect to be able to write much while here because it's very busy and I also want to reflect a bit before writing.
In this post, I share two articles I wrote recently and some other tidbits...
It's Monday morning in Nagoya, Japan as I write this. I'm still jet-lagged and up early, so here's a blog post after all...
Sunday, I had the chance to visit the Toyota Commemorative Museum of Industry and Technology in Nagoya. There's so much that I can blog about...I'll write more posts about my museum visit in the future.
In this post though, I share a little bit about some of the books that they sell - in English and Japanese...
