Deja Vu – WSJ.com “Early Industry Expert Soon Realized a Staff Had Its Own Efficiency” The WSJ has it wrong on manufacturing, once again. Not that I expect the Wall Street Journal to be a friend of the “working man,”…
You might remember the hubbub (and my earlier blog post) about this article that somehow appeared in the NEJM: “Medical Taylorism.” It’s sad and frustrating that people so often talk past each other in these different “debates” about Lean. Drs. Groopman and Hartzband…
In the midst of the discussion about the NEJM article, John Shook of LEI (a former Toyota employee) pointed me to this 1993 HBR article: "Time-and-Motion Regained" I believe it's freely available...
Once again, the WSJ has written about Lean at Starbucks (see my last post “Controversy over New Standardized Work at Some Starbucks Stores“) in Wednesday’s paper. The newest article is called “At Starbucks, Baristas Told No More Than Two Drinks“,…
There’s a nursing model where one nurse passes medications to every patient on the unit and does nothing else. Another nurse does treatments. An aide does baths and vital signs. Nobody is responsible for a patient. Everybody is responsible for…
My guest for Episode #400 is Jeffrey Liker, the retired University of Michigan professor who has recently released the second updated and revised version of his seminal book The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles from the World’s Greatest Manufacturer. The new edition…
Joining me for Episode #339 of the podcast is Charles Protzman, author of a great number of Lean healthcare books. Today, we are talking about a book that he wrote for a broader audience, The BASICS Lean Implementation Model: Lean…
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…
Thanks to my Amazon Kindle app on my iPad, I get to carry much of my book collection with me. Sometimes, while on the road, I end up eating dinner alone with my iPad. Recently, I was in a Japanese…
Joining me again for Episode #244 is Dan Markovitz. Today’s episode is part 2 of our discussion about his most recent book Building the Fit Organization: Six Core Principles for Making Your Company Stronger, Faster, and More Competitive, a recipient of the Shingo…
Today’s post is a throwback to an essay that I originally wrote for the excellent book Lean-Led Hospital Design: Creating the Efficient Hospital of the Future, where it appears in an appendix with some other contributed essays. You can listen to…
Our guest today is Alan G. Robinson, PhD, an award-winning author, educator, researcher and consultant. He has co-authored six books, including Modern Approaches to Manufacturing Improvement: The Shingo System, Ideas Are Free, and his latest, The Idea-Driven Organization. His specialties include managing…
