All posts from Mark Graban’s LeanBlog.org, including podcasts, announcements, articles, and more.
Mark’s note: Today’s post is by David Meier, a former Toyota group leader, and co-author of the excellent books The Toyota Way Fieldbook and Toyota Talent: Developing Your People the Toyota Way. He is currently working on a project to…
This week, I’ll be in The Netherlands for the first time since my visit in 2009. I was invited that first time by Marc Rouppe van der Voort to visit St. Elisabeth Hospital (where he worked at the time) and…
TL;DR: Not every question is actually a question. Some are directives, some are blame in disguise, and some are just declarative statements wearing a question mark. If you mean to say something directly, it’s usually more respectful to say it…
Sunday’s episode of 60 Minutes included an interview with nurses who directly cared for the first U.S. Ebola patient, Thomas Eric Duncan, in the emergency department or ICU at Texas Health Resources Presbyterian Hospital. Say what you will about the…
Organizations try to copy each other all the time. It doesn’t always work. Manufacturing: A plant manager visits another factory and sees neatly organized tools and then comes home and tells everybody “to do 5S.” They’ve thoroughly missed the fact…
Tomorrow, at 1 pm Eastern, Dr. Greg Jacobson and I are giving a KaiNexus-sponsored webinar: Daily Management with KaiNexus: From Huddle Boards to Web-Based Technology I’ll be talking about daily Lean management practices, such as: Strategy deployment Process audits /…
Note: This is being republished, with permission, under a Creative Commons license. See the original ProPublica page and comments. by Marshall Allen ProPublica, Sep. 19, 2013, 10:03 a.m.by Charles Ornstein and Lena Groeger, ProPublicaby Dan Nguyen, Charles Ornstein and Tracy…
I’m guessing that many of you know Bruce Hamilton’s wonderful “Toast Kaizen” video from GBMP. When I use clips of the video for teaching Lean and Kaizen principles, part of the discussion is about how to go from the current…
Mark’s note: Christina Kach is our guest blogger today, with a post about the recent North East Shingo Conference, where she was an attendee. See her past posts here. Recently, my coworkers and I had the opportunity to attend the North East…
Last week, I taught a pilot session of a new class on Kaizen and continuous improvement that I taught for visitors to the ThedaCare Center for Healthcare Value. Unlike other workshops that have assumed people are starting from scratch, this…
During a recent visit to Franciscan St. Francis Health, several nurses proudly introduced themselves as “Kaizen Queens”–and one, with a smile, as the “Kaizen Princess.” Across the hospital, the broader term “Kaizeneer” is used to describe anyone who takes part…
I saw this headline the other day: “U.S. Soldiers Get Just Four Hours of Ebola Training“ The phrase “just four hours” implies that it wasn’t enough. How do we know? Maybe four hours of training, done properly, is all that’s…
