All posts from Mark Graban’s LeanBlog.org, including podcasts, announcements, articles, and more.
In a car assembly plant, they do a pretty good job of ensuring that no assembly line worker has to do 70 seconds worth of work in a 60 second job cycle. It’s basic Industrial Engineering and, well, it’s relatively…
I had previously blogged about this Lean healthcare study trip to Japan, but I’m really excited that it’s coming up soon! I depart in just over a week and I’m sure the trip will give me plenty to share and…
Suggestion boxes collect ideas–but Kaizen builds capability. In this short video, I explain why continuous improvement depends on leadership behaviors, not passive systems. The Lean Enterprise Institute recorded this short video while we were at the recent Northeast Shingo Prize…
Although I don’t get to play much anymore, I used to be a pretty serious drummer (I almost said “musician,” but that invites jokes that drummers aren’t really musicians). I was more of a percussionist — playing everything from timpani…
Today’s guest post is by Natalie Sayer, who was my guest for Podcast #145. Most of the literature I read about “respect for people” has an inference that it is uni-directional or bidirectional, tied to the organizational hierarchy. I…
Yesterday’s PBS News Hour had a piece on the use of Lean and the Toyota Production System at Seattle’s Virginia Mason Medical Center:
I’ve always been intrigued by entrepreneur (and billionaire) Elon Musk. He founded PayPal (which I have used for over ten years), founded SpaceX (which I would love to use, but can’t afford), and is the CEO of Tesla (not really…
Karen Wolk Feinstein, president and CEO of the Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative, channeled the Saturday Night Live Weekend Update segment “Really!?!” in this recent op-ed titled: “Don’t put this on patients: Sick people are supposed to monitor medical errors? Really??“…
TL;DR: Many “Lean Six Sigma” programs misrepresent Lean as a set of tools layered onto Six Sigma. Lean is not a toolbox–it’s a management system and culture rooted in flow, quality, and respect for people. When Lean is reduced to…
Here’s an interesting story from this week: “Google early earnings release stuns traders.” Reportedly, the Google financial report for Wall Street was mistakenly released EARLY. Instead of releasing after the close of trading, it was sent out by R.R. Donnelly,…
The team at KaiNexus (where I am the “chief improvement officer”) is always improving. I want to share a few of these improvements, as our CEO/co-founder Greg Jacobson, MD and I are presenting today at the annual conference of the…
The list of stuff I’ve read and wanted to blog about has grown… that inventory becomes a post like this. Here are links to some varied articles I’ve read recently that might be of interest on a number of Lean…
