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You Can’t Cut Your Way to Success in Healthcare, with Andre DeMerchant

Joining me for Episode #307 of the podcast is my friend Andre DeMerchant, the President of DeMerchant Healthcare Solutions Inc., based in Kitchener, Ontario. We first crossed paths when we had the chance to work together with an American healthcare client via our then-affiliation with Pascal Dennis and Lean Pathways. 

In today's episode, we talk about Andre's history working for Toyota in Canada and what he learned there -- and why it's important that he learned about "how flow works" at Toyota. We chat about the terms "Lean" and "The Toyota Production System" and what those words mean to him. How does TPS "transcend culture and language," as well as industries?

We then shift to talking about healthcare and some of the common challenges, including "financial hardships," that are faced in many countries. Why are hospitals "poorly prepared for change" in many cases? Another main theme is "cost cutting" and why you can't cut your way to success. 

Lessons from Tesla: Short-Term Thinking and Short-Term Layoffs

Again, Tesla and their CEO Elon Musk are generating a lot of news and, I think, many things to think about, even if the lessons learned are, perhaps, about things NOT to do in our organizations.

See previous posts about Tesla

As you might know, Tesla has been very much behind schedule with their Model 3 production ramp up. Last week, we saw news stories about a production shutdown that's intended to get things back on track:

"Tesla Is Temporarily Shutting Down Model 3 Production. Again."

Are short-term layoffs the best thing to do for the long term?

Employee Complaints About Lean in Healthcare, Even at Some of the Best Organizations

Last week, I blogged about some employee complaints related to rotating day and night shifts at the Toyota San Antonio plant. In that post, I mentioned that employees who post on Glassdoor.com and other sites might not be a representative sample of the full employee population.

With that in mind, what happens when we search the Glassdoor surveys of some well-known "Lean hospitals?"

I posted a few of these employee comments on LinkedIn the other day (a short post that has received over 50,000 views and prompted a lot of discussion).

Santa’s Little Kaizeneers?

Thanks to my friend Sylvain for sending me this cartoon. It would have been more timely for me to share this before Christmas, but there's an opportunity for improvement.

The cartoon series is called Real Life Adventures by Gary Wise and Lance Aldrich. This particular cartoon appeared on December 13, 2017.

Here's the top part... please click through to their website to see the entire cartoon and I'll talk about it here in this post, sharing links to other blog posts and videos on the topic.

Why Toyota’s Rotating Shifts Raise Questions About Safety, Health, and Respect for People

Prolonged worker resting at car assembly plant, with cars in progress and assembly workers in background.

There's much to admire about Toyota and even regular readers of this blog might throw the "fanboy" label at me. Toyota employees in San Antonio have a lot of positive things ("pros") to say online about working there. But, the overwhelming "con" is the rotating work schedules - being on days for two weeks then switching to nights for two weeks. Where do a priority on safety and "respect for people" enter into the discussion about which shift pattern is safest, most effective, and most fair?

What We’re Looking Forward to Learning at the Toyota Plant Tour

Tomorrow, with the entire KaiNexus team, I'm going to visit the Toyota truck plant in San Antonio, the plant referred TMMTX. The 15 of us will be there in closed toed shoes and all other required clothing to learn about the Toyota Production System, Kaizen (continuous improvement), and Lean.

I've blogged about it on the KaiNexus blog. I asked the KaiNexus team to say a little bit about what they hope to learn in the visit and you can read their comments it here.

In this post, I share a 24-minute tour preview webinar that I put together, links to past tour blog posts, and more.

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