Podcast Follow Up: Kaizen Forms
I received a follow up question after my first Podcast with Norman Bodek, about where to find a template or example of a kaizen form. One suggestion is to take a look at Norm’s book The Idea Generator. Does anyone…
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All posts from Mark Graban’s LeanBlog.org, including podcasts, announcements, articles, and more.
Lack of CT Scan Error Proofing Leads to Death
WOAI: San Antonio News – Woman Dies after Medical Mistake at CTRC An 81 year-old woman died tragically after she was injected with 100cc of air instead of contrast die before a CT scan. The documents also state, “Found to…
Lean Lessons from History: Pursuit of Perfection
Few would argue that lean is about an journey to the ideal state, towards perfection. It’s a continuous, never ending journey. This is quite dated, but since it was before the blog, I’ve never written about it. I wrote a…
How Going Lean Made Kell Better
7/2006 – Graphic Arts Monthly Here is a very positive sounding description of a lean effort in the packaging/printing industry. This is short on details, but provides a decent overview of lean as a “total enterprise strategy.” That said, the…
Why Do We Blame?
Jetliner taking off at O’Hare barely clears 747 on runway | Chicago Tribune As a frequent flyer (I landed at O’Hare on Monday), and an aspiring “lean thinker,” I pay close attention to this sort of thing. Look at the…
Building Near Your Customers
By Jamie Flinchbaugh Mark recently posted about Building Near Your Customers. Here’s another reason – your product might end up at the bottom of the sea. Check out what’s happened to 5,000 cars on their way to the Vancouver. I…
Building Near Your Customers
Bloomberg.com: U.S.: Here is a great lesson in the lean/TPS concept of building near your customers, from an article about the upcoming Toyota San Antonio plant: Hidehiko “T.J.” Tajima, president of the Toyota plant, said the relationships fostered during the…
Notes from a Toyota Georgetown Tour
Construction Executive Lessons from the Toyota Visit :: Reforming Project Management Great post on the Reforming Project Management blog, notes on a TMMK visit, 23 good points and notes about the Toyota Production System. Here is one that mirrors what…
Lean Customer Service and Phone Queues
It’s nice to be pleasantly surprised by customer service. I called Avis this morning (I’m not renting through National after their poor service last week). I expected to fight through the usual “customer service” voice prompts, press 1 for this,…
Conn-Selmer to Hire Replacement "Monkeys"?
Contract offers strike sour note The Bach workers are still out on strike in Indiana, they have been since April 1. I haven’t written about it in a while, but saw another article. It really does sound like an issue…
We need Lean, not more $tudies
Report: Drug errors injure more than 1.5M There are many lean lessons and methods that can be applied to fixing pharmacies and drug dispensing. One method is the use of electronic prescriptions. Errors are still possible with electronic systems (clicking…
Great Books You Didn’t Know Were About Lean
There are many books that are not at all about lean, but the lessons they contain are very helpful to a lean journey. Here’s one such example: The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell While this The New Yorker writer has…
