All posts from Mark Graban’s LeanBlog.org, including podcasts, announcements, articles, and more.
They just started a year ago (better late than never?), but San Francisco General Hospital had its Lean efforts highlighted in the San Francisco Chronicle last week: “S.F. General following ‘Toyota Way’ to efficiency.” On the very same day, another…
Mark’s note: What follows is a guest post by Keivan Zokaei about the necessary and unsurprisingly overlap between Lean principles and environmental stewardship. I wrote about this dynamic in a 2010 blog post: “Lean Leads to Green, Which Supports Lean,”…
It was great to see this TIME story (which I think is only available online), by Rick Wartzman of the Drucker Institute: “The Real Face of Healthcare Reform.” Wartzman cites ThedaCare as an organization that is successfully reforming itself AND…
Here are a few upcoming free webinars that I am participating in… I hope you are interested and can attend: Mark Graban & Joe Swartz – Healthcare Kaizen Join Shingo Research Award recipients, lean experts and authors of Healthcare Kaizen,…
I recently received two emails that are worth sharing, in anonymous form here. One was from somebody I know who just quit a Lean role at a major academic medical center after a few years there, as he’s looking to…
My wife is a leader in a business (not GE) that does aircraft engine “MRO” work – maintenance, repair, and overhaul. I’ve been able to visit her shop floor (her “gemba”) and we noticed similar parallels between their work (bring…
I had a chance again today to attend ThedaCare’s weekly “report out,” where a few hundred people gather in an auditorium to review and celebrate their “rapid improvement events” from the past week. I think everybody should make the trip…
Mark’s Note: Today’s post is by a regular guest contributor, Christina Kach. I was disappointed that I couldn’t attend this year’s event in Massachusetts, but I was happy that Christina put together this summary. Last week I had the…
tl;dr: Most “Lean Six Sigma” programs teach a thin layer of Lean tools on top of a heavily Six Sigma-centric curriculum. If you want real Lean thinking, culture, and leadership, this format rarely delivers it. I had a conversation recently…
In some “Kaizen Kickoff” coaching that I’ve been doing recently, I’ve been spending time with managers and other leaders as they interact with nurses and other staff members with the goal of finding problems, opportunities for improvement, and ideas. One…
I’ve partnered up with the Ohio-based non-profit consulting group, TechSolve, over the past few years in some of their Lean healthcare promotions efforts, recently teaching some classes with them on Lean and Kaizen in healthcare. One of their team members,…
Joining me for episode #187 is Joe Swartz, my friend and esteemed co-author of our books Healthcare Kaizen: Engaging Front-Line Staff in Sustainable Continuous Improvements and The Executive Guide to Healthcare Kaizen: Leadership for a Continuously Learning and Improving Organization.…
