An Industrial Engineer as Hospital CEO
Last Friday at SHS/ASQ, I heard a talk by Michael Riordan, the CEO of the Greenville Hospital System in South Carolina. He is one of what must be a very small number of Industrial Engineers who made it to the…
Category Blog
All Blog Posts
All posts from Mark Graban’s LeanBlog.org, including podcasts, announcements, articles, and more.
How “Training With Industry” Helped in This Hospital Laboratory
On Friday, I co-presented at the Society for Health Systems / ASQ Healthcare Division conference in Atlanta. It was the first time this was done jointly and it seemed we had more physicians and other clinical people around, which is…
Productivity Targets Getting in the Way of Productivity Improvement
Earlier this morning, I attended a presentation at SHS/ASQ about Lean implementation in multiple emergency rooms in a large health system. There were a lot of positives and one red flag that I heard that might be worth discussion.
“Single Piece Flow” in Medicine
I’ve always enjoyed my discussions with Sami Bahri, D.D.S., the “World’s First Lean Dentist.” One concept he talks about, most recently in our video podcast, is the application of the Lean concept of “single-piece flow” to dentistry and his patients.…
Detroidenfreude
Random thought related to those from the Big 3 Detroit 3 who are happy to see Toyota suffer, I think I’m coining a term (I can’t find it, or this spelling, via google anywhere): I think I’m coining a phrase:…
Akio Toyoda’s Testimony to Congress
I only watched a few minutes of Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda’s live testimony (thanks to online cable news streaming), but the first things I heard prompted me to Tweet about it and I’m following up with a quick post. You…
Karl Wadensten on VIBCO’s Lean Transformation & The Lean Nation Radio Show
Episode 84 is audio from Video Podcast #10 (available on YouTube). This is a conversation with Karl Wadensten, President of VIBCO, a manufacturer in Wyoming, R.I. and host of the now-retired radio program The Lean Nation. Karl shares the remarkable…
LeanBlog Video Podcast #10 – Karl Wadensten of VIBCO and The Lean Nation
Episode #10 is a conversation with Karl Wadensten, President of VIBCO, a manufacturer in Wyoming, R.I. Here, we talk about his radio show, “The Lean Nation,” which (formerly aired) on AM 790 in Rhode Island. This is the same discussion as…
Familiar Voices and New Voices on Lean
You heard enough from me yesterday… today I want to share some other voices with you and their thoughts on Lean. First, familiar voices (John Shook and Jeff Liker) and someone who might seem like a new voice in the…
Standardized Work in Lean Healthcare: Insights from Toyota and Dr. Atul Gawande
TL;DR: Standardized work, influenced by Toyota and Dr. Atul Gawande, is crucial for improving safety, quality, and efficiency in healthcare. It should be created by those who do the work, be flexible, and serve as a basis for continuous improvement.…
When “Efficiency” Misses the Point: A L.A.M.E. Lean Story on NPR
TL;DR: An NPR story about workplace “efficiency” illustrates L.A.M.E.–Lean As Misguidedly Executed–where tools like 5S are applied without respect for people or employee engagement. True Lean builds capability with the people doing the work, not through top-down cost cutting. Oh…
A New App to Download, Events to Attend, and a Book to Read
Today’s post is a few Friday odds and ends about a new thing I’ve been involved, events I’m attending, and a new book I’m anxious to read (after I’m done reading a favorite old one).
