All posts from Mark Graban’s LeanBlog.org, including podcasts, announcements, articles, and more.
I’m a critic of traditional suggestion boxes since they are usually garbage cans for ideas. Boxes collect anonymous complaints (not good), and managers often ignore what’s in the box (not good either). I thought I had heard it all about…
Joining me for Episode #169 is Leonard L. Berry, PhD, Distinguished Professor of Marketing in the Mays Business School at Texas A&M University. We are talking about his article that he co-authored with John Toussaint, MD Mayo Clinic Proceedings: “The…
I always get annoyed when people spread the false dichotomy of “Lean is about efficiency and Six Sigma is for quality.” Replace the word “efficiency” with “speed” or “flow” and it’s still wrong. Here is an example of this falsehood…
When I talk to people about the Kaizen approach to continuous improvement, with my consulting hat on or in my role with KaiNexus, I don’t find anybody who is resistant to the IDEA of continuous improvement. But, they have a…
From today’s news: “Backup presidential limo on its way for Obama in Israel after fuel filling failure.” U.S. President Barack Obama’s trip to Israel was tripped up by a preventable error – the Presidential limousine was mistakenly filled with diesel fuel…
While Lean is not primarily a cost-cutting methodology (or, we could say it’s not focused ONLY on costs), cost reduction is a common end result of improving safety, quality, flow, and other factors. Since 60 to 70% of a hospital’s…
Today I’m linking to a guest post that I wrote for my friend Marc Rouppe van der Voort who works at St. Elisabeth Hospital (Tilburg, Netherlands) and has a blog in Dutch (with auto Google translation). Marc used to maintain a…
My guest for episode #168 is Carolyn McCulley, from CityGate Films, and she is a co-director and producer of the upcoming documentary called “Breaking the Wall of Silence,” which sheds light on patient safety challenges in healthcare — but more…
With apologies to The Beatles and Dr. John Toussaint: “Kaizen Culture” (sung to “Revolution” by The Beatles) You say you want a kaizen culture Well, you know We all want to change our work You tell me that it’s…
In all of the news of the newly announced Pope Francis, this line from a news article made me chuckle… after three votes did not result in the election of a Pope: “You can’t expect a microwave pope. It’s a…
I saw some posters and presentations at the recent Society for Health Systems conference that include some nice examples of this approach from organizations including the Indianapolis VA, East Tennessee Children's Hospital, and Norwalk Hospital...
If we're doing trivial Lean projects without addressing patient harm or patient waiting times, we run the risk of "5S-ing the deck chairs on the Titanic"...
