It’s time for a Lean Blog feature I haven’t done in a while…. “A Lean Guy Reads _______”. I’ve done this before with the WSJ, Fortune, and USA Today (click here for past editions). This time, it’s Tuesday’s USA Today…
As a regular Starbucks customer (especially so when I lived in Boston, a few stories directly above a Starbucks store), I try to follow the company closely, including reading the “Starbucks Gossip” blog from time to time. I’ve posted before…
An editorial written by an American Airlines pilot in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram caught my attention (“Unintended consequences of the Passenger Bill of Rights“). The pilot makes the case that the actions of Congress taken to prevent multi-hour passenger delays…
Hat tip to the WSJ for their review of the new book Get Rid of the Performance Review!: How Companies Can Stop Intimidating, Start Managing–and Focus on What Really Matters. Dr. Deming criticized the annual performance review decades ago and…
The idea of “surgical robots” is an interesting one. As a Lean guy, I’m naturally somewhat skeptical of technology – not to be a Luddite, but GM was the company that wanted the high-tech lights-out robotic factory (a vision that…
I’m blogging notes and thoughts as I watch the Discovery Channel documentary by actor Dennis Quaid and others — “Chasing Zero: Winning the War on Healthcare Harm” that first aired April 24 at 8 am EDT. With laptop and…
In recent years, healthcare has been learning a lot of lessons from aviation — including checklists and “Crew Resource Management,” as written about in the excellent books The Checklist Manifesto and Why Hospitals Should Fly. Aviation has gotten much…
Regular followers of my blog know that I’ve been creating audio podcasts since 2006. Later today (at 3 PM), I am publishing #86 in the series, an interview with David Sundahl, PhD of Rule 4 Consulting. I’ve made mistakes every…
Today’s post is a few Friday odds and ends about a new thing I’ve been involved, events I’m attending, and a new book I’m anxious to read (after I’m done reading a favorite old one).
As I’m traveling back from Sweden today, I think I’ll be catching up on the web reaction to Toyota’s major quality problems and recalls. I am not a Toyota insider and I don’t claim to know what happened or what…
Saturday’s Wall Street Journal had an article (“11 Minutes of Action“) with analysis that said something my wife noticed a long time ago – there’s a lot of standing around during an NFL football game (or any football game, for…
Obama Awards Budget-Minded Federal Employee I saw this in the news yesterday about a federal employee from the VA, Nancy Fichtner, a clerk at the Grand Junction Veterans Medical Center. President Obama awarded her the “SAVE award,” which stands for…
