All posts from Mark Graban’s LeanBlog.org, including podcasts, announcements, articles, and more.
TL;DR: Quality Circles are still thriving in Japanese hospitals and companies–rooted in the philosophy of developing people through structured problem solving. What some in the West now call “A3 Thinking” or “PDSA” is alive and well in Japan as a…
Mark’s note: Today’s guest post is by Brian Buck, a fellow lean healthcare practitioner who blogged until about two years ago at his site “Improve With Me.” Recently, I took my son to his primary care provider and the doctor…
Two Toyota kaizen examples stood out during my November 2014 visit to the Tsutsumi plant: a hook for our tour guide’s bag and cords that held plants in place on a stairwell. Both addressed small annoyances noticed by people doing…
Here’s the third cartoon collaboration with artist Carrie Schurman, CMA (AAMA), a workflow facilitator at a health system in Florida. See all of the cartoons here. More to come! This cartoon is not inspired by any particular incident or any real health…
Thanks to my friend (and future co-author) Mike Stoecklein for sharing this video (and a blog post) about his Healthcare Value Network visit to Scottsdale Lincoln Health Network (now called HonorHealth). The video shows many employees from many different departments at what…
I was thankful to find this CBC Radio news story / podcast from the program “White Coat Black Art,” hosted by Dr. Brian Goldman: The Toyota Way for Healthcare It’s just under 30 minutes long and I think it’s a…
Today, I’m traveling to Tokyo, but I’m still thinking of the amazing nurses and leaders at Franciscan St. Francis Health in Indiana. Through my co-author Joe Swartz, the director of business transformation, their work is featured heavily in our book Healthcare Kaizen.…
Tomorrow, I’m leaving for Japan and I’ll be with Kaizen Institute for our second Lean healthcare study tour (see a PDF about the trip). We have an incredibly diverse group, with attendees from the U.S., Canada, Denmark, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Malaysia,…
Last Wednesday, I gave a presentation on Lean, Kaizen, and continuous improvement for healthcare at the Dutch Lean Event conference. The organizers said they want their event to be a “festival” with a fun atmosphere. They had a DJ (you…
About two years ago, we produced some short two- to three-minute education videos about Lean, Kaizen, and continuous improvement for KaiNexus. These were intended as short coaching sessions that would be sent to our customers / users and we’ve also…
Mark’s note: Today’s post is a guest post by my friend and colleague Isaac Mitchell. We’ve crossed paths at conferences, including the annual Society for Health Systems conference, where he shared some of their great work on Kaizen that’s being…
Back in September, I wrote about our most recent “Lean Coffee” gathering in San Antonio, where people from different healthcare organizations talked about their improvement efforts. As part of my visit to The Netherlands this week, Marc Rouppe van der…
