All posts from Mark Graban’s LeanBlog.org, including podcasts, announcements, articles, and more.
I’ve written a lot about Dr. Deming’s famous “Red Bead Experiment.” As a follow up to my workshop at February’s Society for Health Systems Conference (we played the simulation with a group there), Mike and I promised to do a…
TL;DR: Lean isn’t the problem nurses are reacting to–bad management is. When hospitals confuse Lean with cost-cutting, understaffing, or work intensification, they create unsafe conditions for nurses and patients. Real Lean in healthcare is built on Respect for People: adequate…
Episode #254 is interesting to me for a number of reasons. For one, I have a “guest co-host” joining me for the first time. He’s Chip Ponsford, DVM, a doctor of veterinary medicine and former practice owner who I’ve gotten…
Thanks to the team at Creative Safety Supply for their sponsorship of LeanBlog.org. They’ve been running ads in the right sidebar since 2013. They’re a great fit for this blog because of their products that support safety and visual methods, two…
There’s a lot of silly stuff that people post that appears on the LinkedIn main page when I log in, between narcissistic selfies and urban legends like the one about Bill Gates and his daughter that’s making the rounds. But…
Thanks to those of you who pre-ordered the 3rd edition of my book Lean Hospitals. Click below to read a free preview from the book, the start of the chapter on leading and engaging employees (arguably, it’s all about leadership). Improving the…
I’m a car guy. Above all other mechanical devices that we engineers get to be involved with, I am fascinated most with these incredible machines. When you consider how automobile soperate nearly flawlessly even when enduring a spectrum of environmental…
I’ve known Dr. Mark Jaben for a while now… we share not just a similar sounding name, but also a passion for healthcare improvement. You can hear my 2014 podcast with him about change and brain science. He’s recently written…
Today’s the first day of the two-day Lean Healthcare Transformation Summit, an annual event that’s being held this year near Miami. If you’re at the Summit, please find me to say hello. You can follow the event on Twitter using…
Joining me for Episode #253 is Ash Maurya, author of the book Running Lean: Iterate from Plan A to a Plan That Works and his latest, being released this week, called Scaling Lean: Mastering the Key Metrics for Startup Growth. Ash is an entrepreneur…
tl;dr: Lean doesn’t mean “zero inventory” — and it doesn’t mean eliminating waiting rooms either. In both manufacturing and healthcare, low inventory and less waiting are outcomes of capable, reliable processes, not goals to chase through absolutes. For decades, manufacturers…
Yesterday was an exciting day for me, professionally and personally, as I received my first copies of the 3rd edition of my book Lean Hospitals (I’ll stop blogging about the book so much, I promise). This is the fifth time I’ve had…
