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…
On Twitter last week, Tom Peters wrote: This is the wrong premise – it’s not that doctors (and nurses, for that matter) aren’t smart or that they haven’t been taught that hand hygiene is important. The right question should be…
Thanks to my friend Amber for telling me about Dr. Atul Gawande’s interview on NPR’s Morning Edition yesterday. Regular readers of the blog will know I’m a huge fan of Gawande’s previous books Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect…
We had some local Boston news about hospitals reducing infection rates, including dangerous blood stream infections that result from central lines. Several academic medical centers in Boston said the number of ICU patients contracting bloodstream infections had dropped by at…
Frank and Lillian Gilbreth: scientific management in the operating room I sprung $20 for this healthcare journal article about the Gilbreths, thought I’d share a few historical tidbits here. I already knew that Frank Gilbreth was credited with the idea…
Article: How Toyota Defies Gravity While researching an upcoming presentation, I found this FORTUNE article from 1997. I was looking for a reference to Toyota letting its competitors (yes, Ford, GM, and Chrysler) tour its factories. Why Would Toyota Let…
As I had alluded to the other day, there was a huge investigative piece that ran across the country Sunday in the Hearst Newspapers. The main URL for the series is www.DeadByMistake.com. You can read all of the articles at…
… or if it’s too easy to make mistakes. One of my favorite books of all time is Donald Norman’s The Design of Everyday Things. Not strictly a Lean book… even if you’re not a product designer, the book teaches…
Why ‘Quality’ Care Is Dangerous – WSJ.com Yesterday’s WSJ opinion piece by Dr. Jerome Goopman (author of How Doctors Think) and Pamela Hartzband caught my eye. Thanks to the four or five of you who also emailed me the link…
Device Alerts Doctors To Items Left Behind After Surgery – Indiana News Story – WRTV Indianapolis Healthcare is often stuck in the mindset that’s considered outdated in lean manufacturing settings — the old idea that better quality must inherently cost…
Plane that crashed near Buffalo was on autopilot After “Sully” and his crew were lauded as heroes for following checklists, keeping calm, and landing that plane in the Hudson River, it’s sad and interesting that the pilot of the commuter…
Not Jack Handey’s “Deep Thoughts” … more like Larry King’s old USA Today column… it’s Lean Thoughts for Feb 12, 2009… the byproduct of a three-hour drive and too much time listening to cable news on XM… Hello, caller from…
