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All Blog Posts

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

Art Byrne from Wiremold / Lean Thinking

Thanks to blog reader Osvaldo for passing this long. If you’ve read Lean Thinking or anything about Wiremold’s lean journey and wondered about Art Byrne, here’s an update on what he’s doing today. Update: An oversight on my part, I…

Hospitals and Lean

STLtoday – Business – Story Here is an overview and general awareness article from the St. Louis paper. It’s always nice to see lean (and lean healthcare) in the general media. The goal is to map out and retool processes…

Bad Employees or Bad Leader?

Question for the blog readers: A person working in a lean effort complains “My employees won’t follow the standard work.” Bad leader, bad employees, or both? Your thoughts? Please check out my main blog page at www.leanblog.org The RSS feed…

NBA’s David Stern on Listening

‘Welcome to My World’ – WSJ.com: You might remember the story about how the NBA unilaterally changed to a new ball without much input from the players (or that was the complaint). The NBA later reversed course and went back…

"Being Mean Is So Last Millennium"

Business Week Article OK, so here’s the palette cleanser after my Bob Nardelli rant. I like to keep a positive piece at the top of blog for good blog karma. It’s a companion piece about another guy who was passed…

"You can’t s*** on your employees"

Business Week: Out At Home Depot As more details about the former Home Depot “leader” and his “leadership” come out, it’s a sad case study of bad leadership (written about earlier, at risk of being accused of Shadenfreude). Why am…

Great Posts from Quint Studer

Quint Studer is a former hospital CEO who I’ve mentioned a lot here. He has an outstanding blog now. In his issues, he doesn’t talk about “lean” per se, but it absolutely applies, whether you are in healthcare or any…

Lean is Jazz

Hot corporations know how to swing – USATODAY.com Interesting article in the USA Today business section yesterday, an interview with jazz great Wynton Marsalis about how jazz concepts can apply to business. I’m a drummer (or at least used to…

"Be Careful" is Not Enough

I was boarding an American Airlines Super 80 at DFW yesterday, I noticed a warning sign on the controls of the jet bridge. As I’ve said before, “warning signs are not error proofing.” That certainly applies here. There was a…

RFID as a Workaround

I’ve been wondering for a while what the value of my CPIM certification is (a previous employer paid for it). APICS has been trying to reinvent itself as more of a lean organization rather than just being an MRP methodology…