Amid nurse shortage, hospitals focus on retention I’ve heard a similar theme before — the problem isn’t that we need to graduate more nurses, we need to just quit losing so many from the field. Newly minted nurse Katie O’Bryan…
I try to keep apolitical here, so I’m not necessarily looking for discussion of what might be viewed as “waste” (meaning wasteful spending) in the “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act” bill that the House just approved. There are plenty of…
Firms Race To Regain Control Over Inventories – WSJ.com With the dramatically slowing global economy, it’s no surprise that companies and supply chains are getting socked with excess inventories right now. The WSJ discussion very quickly turned to software: The…
Clemson students learn by building a better clock The article I’ve linked to above describes a hands-on simulation being run for Lean students at Clemson University. This is great, since it’s hard to understand Lean principles from just reading books.…
By Adam Zak, Adam Zak Executive Search: As a LeanThinker I am most unabashedly a free market advocate. Free trade, absolutely. Love those imported fresh Mexican tomatoes in my sandwich on a freezing January day. Open skies, no question. I…
Ga. peanut plant has history of problems – Food safety – nbc.com NY Times article There was a lot of focus in the news yesterday about this peanut contamination being an “FDA problem”, with President Obama pointing at a lack…
Gemba Academy – Launching March 2009 Ah, I love a mystery…. big tease ad on the Lean Six Sigma Academy website about something due to launch in March… the “Gemba Academy.” Ron has previously talked about a new venture of…
Just a quick blog post for today… I recently did an online presentation for a student Lean club at Utah State University. It wasn’t as nice as actually being there, but with the webcam connection, I could at least the…
Biden Takes Shot at Roberts for Flubbing Presidential Oath – First 100 Days of Presidency – Politics FOXNews.com On Tuesday, Chief Justice John Roberts appeared to flub his giving of the presidential oath of office, leaving out the word “faithfully”…
Steve Spear spent six months embedded with a Toyota team as a doctoral student, learning the Toyota Production System by teaching it to a supplier in Kentucky. In this episode, he explains what he calls “high velocity” organizations — companies…
I’ve blogged before about the “20 things supervisors shouldn’t say.” I’ll throw out, for discussion, two phrases that are awful to hear in the context of any change management situation, such as Lean in a hospital or a factory. When…
I’m fortunate to have a few private speaking gigs in the coming months (a hospital in Iowa, an online presentation for an engineering student group at Utah State University, and an MBA operations class at Wharton). I do have a…