It’s a fair question: would Lean be easier to implement if your workforce were Japanese — or if you were operating in Japan? After two study trips to Japan with Kaizen Institute, my honest answer is: not necessarily. And the…
A number of you emailed me about this report in the Detroit News. I grew up in Detroit and my first job was as a carrier for the News. Loved ones have received care from the Detroit Medical Center system……
The BBC radio program “The Science Hour” recently aired a program with a segment where an unexpected person (Dr. Kevin Fong) to an unexpected place (UCLA Harbor Medical Center) to look into “Lean.” You might remember UCLA Harbor from my…
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’...
Thanks everybody for reading my blog throughout 2015! It's been a great year and I appreciate you taking time out of your busy lives to read and participate in the discussion. I hope this site will continue to be a part of your life in 2016. Here are the ten most-read posts of the year...
My two previous trips to Japan have been incredible experiences, both personally and professionally. I'm planning to go back in December with a tour group I'm helping organize with Kaizen Institute. When people go to Japan, I think they are expecting to see perfect Lean practices. But, no...
I’ve been studying and working with Lean for 20 years now and I love Lean because I’m still learning and getting better at this craft. I love seeing other people get excited about Lean when it’s new to them, when…
I’ve gone to Japan twice now with Kaizen Institute to study Lean with healthcare professionals from around the world. I first went in 2012, as a paid attendee, and I went back in 2014 as a partner and co-facilitator to…
A collection of creative videos was recently brought to my attention and I’d like to share them here. They are created by Dr. Mark Harrison (@leanpsychiatry), a psychiatrist for an NHS Trust. He created the videos by taking photos of…
The phrase “Lean journey” is used widely to describe an organization’s transformation over time. It’s either a phrase that invokes helpful imagery or it’s a horrible cliché. I was speaking at a Lean event last week and I kept hearing…
When we introduce the idea of Lean to healthcare organizations, it’s very common for somebody (often a senior physician) to say something like, “But we don’t want assembly line medicine.” The implication is that assembly lines and factories are cold,…
Lean provides a philosophy and a management model that should be nothing but good for staff and patients. The idea of “respect for people” might sound nice in principle, but what does it mean in a practical sense...