All posts from Mark Graban’s LeanBlog.org, including podcasts, announcements, articles, and more.
The more I visit different hospitals, the more I tend to roll my eyes at the different signs that aim to remind staff and/or visitors to follow proper hand hygiene practices. These signs are often part of an arms race…
This is free app that’s brought to you by a coalition of lean bloggers. Learn more about it or download it directly from the iTunes Store or the Android Marketplace. A number of us combined efforts to provide this as a…
Mark’s Note: I’m posting this on behalf of a fellow MIT graduate because I thought you might be interested in his research and that at least one of my readers’ organizations might have the experience base required for participation (see…
It’s official – the 2nd revised edition of my first book, Lean Hospitals: Improving Quality, Patient Safety, and Employee Engagement, is now shipping from Amazon.com! Other country sites, like Amazon.ca and Amazon.co.uk don’t have their inventory yet. Ah, paper and…
Paul Akers, the President of FastCap is a great advocate for staff-driven kaizen (or improvement) ideas in the workplace. Paul and his company bring many people through his company so they can see their fun culture of continuous improvement (as…
In honor of Veterans’ Day (in the U.S.) and Remembrance Day (in Canada, where I spent most of the last two weeks, often wearing a poppy pin), let’s pause to honor those who have served their country. Let’s also maybe…
Why inspection alone does not prevent defects TL;DR: Even with multiple editors and spell checks, publishing errors still occur. This post uses real examples to illustrate why 100% inspection is not 100% effective, a lesson that matters even more in…
On last Thursday’s episode of The Office, Dwight Schrute installed a software system that he called an “accountability booster,” aka the “doomsday device,” as it was referred to by the rest of the office staff. There had been a number…
I’m back in Ontario again this week, giving three more short workshops about Healthcare Kaizen at three different hospitals (after seven hospitals in five days last week). Last night, coming through customs at the Toronto airport, I was asked by…
My dad was flying back from Seattle last week and he noticed this at the TSA “gemba” in the airport, as he reported in an email: The [TSA] woman’s stamp kept falling of the stand. She said they just got…
Becker’s Hospital Review published a piece about the first 10 years of Lean at Seattle’s Virginia Mason Medical Center: 10 Years Later: Virginia Mason Production System Still Going Strong. The article highlights some of the reasons for the longevity of…
Some of the best lessons I have ever learned for my career are from Donald Wheeler’s brilliant book Understanding Variation: The Key to Managing Chaos. One idea is that data without context is meaningless. The other is the application of…
