All posts from Mark Graban’s LeanBlog.org, including podcasts, announcements, articles, and more.
I’m going to be in Denver to participate in a “lean healthcare” panel on April 12 through the Colorado Healthcare Strategy & Management group. While in town, I am going to experiment with a public registration seminar/workshop on my book,…
As he mentioned on his blog, John Toussaint has co-authored a piece that was published in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings: “The Promise of Lean in Health Care” (PDF). John is excited that the article will be read by many physicians,…
Thanks to ASQ for posting an audio interview they did with me last month about my book (with Joe Swartz), Healthcare Kaizen: Engaging Front-Line Staff in Sustainable Continuous Improvements. Listen to the interview (MP3 file – 14 minutes) ASQ also…
I guess that, considering last year’s blog post, this Lean thinker couldn’t really root for Notre Dame and Coach Brian Kelly Monday night in the BCS National Championship Game. Just before kickoff, ESPN’s Tom Rinaldi asked Saban, “Coach, you love…
I saw this great image in a Honda TV ad during the BCS National Championship game last night. It’s a very Kaizen expression… that things can always be better, even if you’re a fine-tuned machine like Honda or Toyota. It…
Steve Bell, author (most recently) of the book Run Grow Transform: Integrating Business and Lean IT is my guest for episode #161 of my podcast series. Steve is a fellow faculty member for the Lean Enterprise Institute and he is…
No, this is not a program of Kaizen, or continuous improvement, for babies. Babies naturally grow, try new things, and gain new capabilities. But, we tend to lose that as adults. As Dr. Deming would say the “forces of destruction”…
Thanks to 24×7 Mag for publishing my piece, targeted a bit toward hospital biomed departments, but I think there’s general applicability: Article link: “To Fix Health Care, We Need More “Kaizen” Health care professionals have plenty of ideas for improvement…
Listen My guest for podcast #160 is Joseph S. Guarisco, M.D., FAAEM, FACEP. Dr. Guarisco is currently Chairman of the Department of Emergency Medicine and System Chief of Emergency Services for the Ochsner Health System. Dr. Guarisco is a keynote…
Last week, the New York Times published a piece called “Don’t Just Talk About Change. Show It,” written by Mick Wilz, an employee at Sur-Seal, a family-owned business in Cincinnati. As part of a Lean initiative (as evidenced by their…
As we enter the new year, it’s a great time to reflect back on 2012 – what worked and what didn’t work… what do we plan to do differently in 2013? Those are some of the core questions found on…
tl;dr: A simple coffee mishap–placing a mug upside down under a Keurig–illustrates a core Lean lesson: human error is inevitable, so blaming people doesn’t help. Instead, good systems are designed to anticipate mistakes and prevent harm, reflecting Lean’s principle of…
