Category Blog

All Blog Posts

All posts from Mark Graban’s LeanBlog.org, including podcasts, announcements, articles, and more.

An Error Proofing Challenge

DSC04111

How would you error proof this material handling / logistics situation? I have a few ideas, but thought this would make for interesting discussion. I won’t set up a “spend no money” rule, but cheaper and simpler ideas are always…

Management’s Job is to be Proactive

Running a hospital: Our Joint Commission Report The headline is my modification of a Deming expression, that management’s job is prediction. Statistical process control was one way of predicting future outcomes of a process (if you have a statistically stable…

Some Latest Writing

Although I haven’t been posting in the blog recently (sorry), I have been doing some writing, and thought I would share some of that with you now. I continue to support Assembly Magazine with the monthly Leading Lean column. Assembly…

Lean Airport Lines?

Case of the Vanishing Airport Lines – WSJ.com This article made me think of Lean in the sense that Alaska Air radically rethought the passenger check in process and achieved some dramatic results: In Anchorage, the airline expected a 20%…

More Wisconsin Lean

Green Bay Press-Gazette – Tufco growing operations while keeping safety in focus: Another story from a small company in Wisconsin: “”It is easy to downsize. Growth is difficult,” LeCalsey said. “There are so many draw-offs of profitability in growth.” The…

Kaizening the Lean Blog

In the spirit of continuous improvement… I took the book recommendations off of the bottom of the left hand column. I was suspecting that the amazon links were slowing page loads, too much overhead. Are you seeing faster page loads?…

Great Piece on Problem Solving

Elegant Solutions: Mind of the Innovator Matthew May is the author of the book The Elegant Solution, a friend of this blog, and a blogger in his own right. He has a new “ChangeThis” manifesto called Mind of the Innovator:…

Comments of the Week

Here are some of the best comments of the week. If you’re an RSS reader, come check them out. On my Podcast with Dr. Sami Bahri, there is some Q&A that I passed to Dr. Bahri and are posted under…

Boo Mattel, Hooray Mattel

Mattel is the latest victim in the “poison products from China” series (the “poison train,” as The Consumerist blog calls it). Victim is absolutely the wrong word to use, considering Mattel chose to source from China and admitted their own…