The chain Whole Foods is reportedly having inventory shortages and morale problems. It sounds like a real mess, but thankfully nobody is calling it Lean. Their "Order to Shelf" system reminds me of "Pull to Order" work that I was involved in at Dell about 20 years ago...
The official report is out in Hawaii after the traumatic accidental missile warning that was sent last month. An employee was fired. The leader accepted responsibility and resigned. Why are others being punished?
Today is a day known as "Giving Tuesday," to follow up the commercially-driven "Black Friday" and "Cyber Monday" days.
It's a great day to give to any cause or organization that's meaningful to you.
One organization that I choose to give to throughout the year is the Louise H. Batz Patient Safety Foundation. The Batz Foundation produces practical and helpful guidebooks and apps to help protect patients during their hospital stay or other healthcare encounters.
Previous Episodes (Full List): Click to visually browse episodes For easy access to any Podcast, use the forwarding URL: leanblog.org/X where X is the episode number. This text list is from the old version of the podcast’s main blog page.…
TL;DR: A 1966 magazine exposé documented widespread, preventable patient harm caused by system failures in American hospitals. While some areas have improved, many of the same problems–errors, infections, lack of transparency, and blame instead of learning–still persist today. Three or…
I’ve read most of retired General Stanley McChrystal’s excellent book Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World (I start a lot of books and finish a few). Amazon reminds me that I bought the book just over…
I was invited to give a talk at a gathering of improvement teams and Kaizen Promotion Offices within the NHS in England. It wasn’t feasible for me to attend in person… and presenting live over the internet would have meant…
Last week, I received a few questions from somebody at a hospital system and I thought I'd address one of them here: "Can you suggest any "quick wins" to get staff engaged in a Lean culture?"
People often talk about “fire fighting” in a colloquial way. Today, my guest for episode #278 of the podcast is an actual professional fire fighter, Tom Bouthillet, who serves as Fire Captain / Paramedic for the Hilton Head Island Fire Rescue...
In today's post, I write about how Kaizen starts with you. I share some examples of "personal Kaizen," including the way I've streamlined my call scheduling process, for my benefit and for others.
Thanks to Sam Selay for today's guest post. Although he's writing about the government and the military, I think you'll find it interesting regardless of your industry. Read an excerpt from Sam's chapter of Practicing Lean.
Here’s Part 2 of a post about the original NUMMI Team Member Handbook from 1984 (see Part 1 here). This, and other documents I’ll be blogging about, are part of Don Ephlin’s UAW office papers, archived at the Walter P. Reuther…
