Scroll down for how to subscribe, transcript, and more My guest for Episode #424 of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast is Balaji Reddie, the founder of The Deming Forum of India. An engineer by trade, Balaji was exposed to W. Edwards…
Healthcare – Creating Value for Patients Canadian healthcare policy limits true innovation by clinging to outdated thinking developed in times of much slower change and technological sophistication. If we want patients to benefit from technological innovation, Canada must relax or reinvent…
Lean can be very fragile. History shows that Lean can fall apart even in an organization that is years into a "Lean journey" with strong CEO involvement.
How is this possible? If often happens when a new CEO is brought in from the outside. In the case of the manufacturing company, Wiremold, it happened when they were acquired by a French company, Legrand.
As an aside, the team that coined the term "Lean" almost used the term "fragile," as I blogged about here.
Back in 2007, Bob Emiliani joined me for Episode #30 of the podcast. As we revisit the podcast and the new transcript I had made, what are the lessons for manufacturers or hospitals?
What's the risk that's created when new leadership takes over?
One challenge with teaching Lean is that there isn’t aways a consistent definition that’s used by everybody. Some of the definitions are really bad. Some of them are just different from others. Let’s start with “different.” Is a lack of…
When did the term "concrete head" start getting thrown around in Lean circles? Do people still use this label today? Is it helpful? Should we agree that the term is disrespectful and counter productive?
It's time for another new, revised edition of my book! The 4th edition is the fastest new edition yet, since the world is changing quickly and increasingly uncertain. Hospitals need to react now! Do something! Cut costs! Reduce costs! Slash costs!
I first blogged about this article back in 2009 and it’s still online: “Keen to Be Lean“ The sub headline talks about hospitals being “desperate to cut costs.” Has that changed? I wish the motivation was more often about hospitals…
Today is the Labor Day holiday in the United States (and in Canada, as I recently learned). It’s not just a day of rest or a celebration of people who work… it’s a also day to acknowledge unions and the…
Now, there’s a story written by an emergency medicine physician, Dr. Brad Cotton, that appears in a publication called “Emergency Medicine News” — FIRST PERSON: ‘We Fired Our Hospital’...
Today’s post is a throwback to an essay that I originally wrote for the excellent book Lean-Led Hospital Design: Creating the Efficient Hospital of the Future, where it appears in an appendix with some other contributed essays. You can listen to…
In manufacturing, the term Lean has far too often been synonymous with layoffs. Doing so is more L.A.M.E. than Lean. People get anxious and throw around an acronym LEAN – Less Employees Are Needed. Ironically, Toyota (the inspiration or model for Lean)…
tl;dr: The blog examines the pitfalls of poorly executed Lean methodologies, using an analogy of a cheeseburger to discuss unhealthy implementations. It argues for a nuanced approach to Lean, acknowledging its limitations and ‘horror stories’ in order to effectively achieve…
