I’ve seen/heard two very different views on valuing white collar employees this week. I’m making an assumption that most of the readers here on the blog are salaried/white collar staff (if I’m wrong, please post a comment). Much of the…
WOAI: San Antonio News – Woman Dies after Medical Mistake at CTRC An 81 year-old woman died tragically after she was injected with 100cc of air instead of contrast die before a CT scan. The documents also state, “Found to…
Bloomberg.com: U.S.: Here is a great lesson in the lean/TPS concept of building near your customers, from an article about the upcoming Toyota San Antonio plant: Hidehiko “T.J.” Tajima, president of the Toyota plant, said the relationships fostered during the…
Fun day today. Healthcare, maybe more than other industries, is prone to tolerating and institutionalizing workarounds, as Steven Spear has written about. As I’m teaching a hospital lab about lean, we’re not just analyzing and documenting waste – we’re working…
Construction Executive Lessons from the Toyota Visit :: Reforming Project Management Great post on the Reforming Project Management blog, notes on a TMMK visit, 23 good points and notes about the Toyota Production System. Here is one that mirrors what…
It’s nice to be pleasantly surprised by customer service. I called Avis this morning (I’m not renting through National after their poor service last week). I expected to fight through the usual “customer service” voice prompts, press 1 for this,…
Everyone knows by now that you can get glasses “in about an hour.” I read about them recently in a magazine, this was the quote: “…company was founded and flourished because two entrepreneurs discovered a secret… before LensCrafters, buying a…
Getting lean right is more than just ideas. Here’s an article on demand stream mapping that I was actually interviewed for. Don’t know what that is? Well, here’s the crux of the article that I believe gets it wrong: But…
I know that you can say whatever you want in the press, particularly if you’re trying to sell this, but I couldn’t believe I read this: I had a feeling as I went into this that people had reached their…
In the first-ever Lean Blog Podcast, Mark Graban talks with Norm Bodek about quick and easy Kaizen and how it differs from large, event-based improvement efforts. Bodek explains how simple, employee-led improvements–supported by trust, experimentation, and respect for people–can make…
Society of Manufacturing Engineers -Join I joined SME and received my new member package with the typical membership card etc. (typical of other organizations I belong to or have belonged to — AME, APICS, ASQ). One thing jumped out at…
WSJ.com – In China, 3,500 Test the Waters Of the Pearl River I’ve written before about how polluted China’s rivers are, the cost of unbridled factory growth and an unregulated environment. While you might think the article linked to above…