All posts from Mark Graban’s LeanBlog.org, including podcasts, announcements, articles, and more.
Here’s a hilarious, yet somewhat sad, story that will instantly resonate with students of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. From Poland — police officers in the town of Bialogard were given a strict quota of writing one ticket per day, or…
Here is a new reader question from Steve Palmreuter in Michigan. He raises a topic that I’ve been thinking about lately, so I’m happy to share it with you (with his permission). You might remember Steve as I blogged about…
Dan Pink joins me to discuss his book Drive and the science behind what actually motivates people — ideas deeply aligned with Lean thinking and Deming. We explore why “if-then” rewards backfire for complex work, the dysfunctions of incentive schemes…
Here’s some weekend fun leading into the holiday season… I received a marketing email today from Starbucks that included a phrase that would jump out at any Lean thinker. Who knows how broadly the Starbucks Lean education efforts have gotten…
I’ll apologize if today’s post seems off-topic to my healthcare readers, but I have to share a link to a Sunday New York Times article about General Electric (“G.E. Goes With What It Knows: Making Stuff“). After being seduced by…
I received a question from a reader, a retiree from a manufacturing company who is now a volunteer for a healthcare organization. We have exchanged messages before about opportunities to apply Lean thinking in a faith-based mission-driven organization like this,…
There was a short blurb in the Institute of Industrial Engineers IIE magazine this month that caught my eye. It read: “The vast majority of manufacturers (89 percent) plan to undertake process improvements during the next 12 months, according to…
Following up my notes from Day 1, I’m sharing my notes from the second full day I attended on Wednesday, December 8 2010. Here, in the last day of the IHI National Forum on Quality Improvement in Healthcare, I saw…
For episode #106, we have a returning guest, Jim Baran of the firm Career Kaizen, formerly of “Value Stream Leadership.” Jim was previously a guest on episodes #16, 27, and 88 talking about careers in Lean. Today, Jim talks about…
Mark’s note: Today is the first of what might be a regular series of guest posts from the team at Lean Pathways, Inc., including Pascal Dennis and Al Norval, the leaders of that group. by Al Norval at leansystems.org Lean…
This is just my second time attending the annual Institute for Healthcare Improvement annual forum – one of about 6,000 medical professionals, leaders, and patient advocates in attendance. For those of you on Twitter, I’ve seen familiar faces here, including…
I was recently invited by SixSigmaIQ.com to participate by giving a response to the question “How to beat the mid-project blues?” – looking at Lean as a project (or looking at projects in the midst of a Lean transformation. I’m…
