All posts from Mark Graban’s LeanBlog.org, including podcasts, announcements, articles, and more.
Yesterday’s WSJ front page headline caught my eye, as a frequent Starbucks customer and obvious Lean zealot: Latest Starbucks Buzzword: ‘Lean’ Japanese Techniques The headline is full bodied and complex brew that gives us a lot to chew on before…
In my Podcasts, I normally let me guests do most of the talking. But I was invited by Joe Dager, of the Business901 Podcasts, to be the interviewee this time. We ended up doing two separate podcasts. The first was…
Many thanks to those of you who answered my Lean Blog Reader Survey. I appreciate the comments and it was a good chance for reflection (sometimes referred to as “hansei” in the Lean world, using the Japanese word). One question…
I had the TV news on and I found this commercial… if you can make out the text it reads: “4.2L V8 ENGINE THE DELIVERS 405 HP” D’oh!! That’s quite a typo. As Google points out: Yes, the voiceover said…
Mark’s note: Jim’s post originally started as a comment in response to my post “Where Did I Start with Lean?” but it exceeded the size limit for a comment, I believe. So I’m posting it here: By Jim Baran This…
2008 Annual Report: Reducing Waste I had a great visit with Group Health in Seattle on Monday, they are doing some great work with Lean in improving primary care and their insurance office operations. You might remember my podcast (from…
While in the UK recently, I met Michael Balle, the author of the Shingo Prize winning book The Gold Mine: A Novel of Lean Turnaround. He has a new book (published by LEI, my employer) just out this week called…
By Andy Wagner: The New York Times recently published an essay by Matthew Crawford, based on his new book Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work. In his inquiry into the value of work, Crawford takes…
As we study the processes we use to do our work, we see opportunities that we may not have even considered before we learned about the Toyota Production System and Lean. At St. Luke’s Hospital in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, we…
YouTube – Automated Bagel Slicer Right after I posted this link with the Yo! Sushi video last week, I went out to run some errands. I stopped to get a bagel and found this bagel transportation automation and took a…
A reader, Dan, asked a great question on the MoveToHealthcare.ning.com site (since closed), re-used here with his permission: I recently attended a 2-day Lean Healthcare Training and Project Report Out session. When they covered the VSM material, I was surprised…
A question came in from a blog reader — simple question with no simple or easy answers: Who are the Lean Thinking CEOs? My first thought is Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, for his famous customer obsession and belief in long-term thinking…
