All posts from Mark Graban’s LeanBlog.org, including podcasts, announcements, articles, and more.
It’s important not to confuse a proper Lean “gemba walk” with the idea of “management by walking around” (MBWA). What did the late, great Dr. W. Edwards Deming say in 1982? ‘Management by walking around’ is hardly ever effective. The…
The “Strong America Now” initiative has proposed there are opportunities to save $500 BILLION a year from our U.S. federal government budget by using Lean and Six Sigma methods (I interviewed Mike George, the founder of the campaign here in…
As I’ve talked to and worked with hospitals and their leaders about Kaizen, or continuous improvement, the concepts, mindsets, and methods make sense to people. They understand how Kaizen is different than the outdated and ineffective suggestion box method. A…
The 2nd revised edition of my book Lean Hospitals can be pre-ordered from Productivity Press for a 25% discount. The book should be available in early November. Click here for more details on the discount offer. You can also, if…
Thanks to my friend and fellow author Karen Martin for taking this picture while in Calgary. Even if you don’t wear high heeled shoes, I think you can appreciate the attempt at error proofing. Karen and I both wondered if…
Lately, there have been many stories in the news about supermarkets ripping out self-service checkout scanner, stories like this: “Supermarkets start bagging self-serve checkouts.” 10 years ago, the supermarkets saw this technology as a clear cost savings – reducing labor…
As I’m reading the new book by Eric Ries, The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses, I’m reading it with an eye for concepts that can be applied more broadly than traditional startup…
I volunteered to give a presentation last Friday for the North Texas Society for Healthcare Risk Management, where I was able to debut some new material from our upcoming book, Healthcare Kaizen. These continuous improvement methods are a great way…
Some people might find this graphic inflammatory, if they are feeling defensive about the state of healthcare and if they feel like they are being blamed personally. The data in this infographic represents the current state, to the best of…
I’ve been reading the book Obliquity: Why Our Goals Are Best Achieved Indirectly and, while it’s really interesting, I tend to agree with some of the reviews that said there was a lot of repetition of the book’s core concept…
It’s a project that my co-author, Joe Swartz, and I have been working on all year… the manuscript is finally complete and sent (as a big batch!) to our publisher. I’m talking about our upcoming book, “Healthcare Kaizen: Engaging Front-Line…
This is the first Lean article or case study I recall seeing about a German hospital: “JACR: Lean Six Sigma increases MRI productivity.” The article clearly articulates the benefits for patients, staff, and the hospital – University Hospital Giessen and…
