Healthcare – Creating Value for Patient Creating value for patients isn’t a “project”. Lean thinking isn’t a program you “implement” in a hospital over a few years. Virginia Mason has been improving value-based care for 17 years and it continues to…
it's great to see an 11 year old thinking like an engineer and an entrepreneur. He's the son of a Toyota "operational excellence" consultant. For those who try to unfortunately equate Lean to a "clean desk policy," the father's desk is a great argument against banning family photos and an illustration of why Lean isn't about putting tape around everything...
This week, I’m in Palm Springs for the annual Lean Healthcare Transformation Summit. Follow along on Twitter using hashtag #HCSummit17. Today, I’m teaching my “Better Metrics” workshop for the third time this year. This page has some additional resources for attendees (the…
I’m guessing most “Lean thinkers” stayed home the other day on the “Black Friday” shopping day. Why might this be? For one, I think we tend to put safety first, so we avoid jostling, pushing, and shoving for discounts (and the…
TL;DR: In the 1980s and ’90s, GM spent roughly $90 billion trying to automate its way to competitiveness. Toyota took a different path–focusing on management systems, culture, and engaging people to improve processes. The results weren’t accidental, and the lesson…
Hopefully you've already seen the famed 1980 NBC documentary "If Japan Can, Why Can't We?" that featured Dr. W. Edwards Deming. I posted a link to the video and some notes on Part 1 of the broadcast. Today, I'd like to blog about Part 3 of the program...
These Donald Trump hats (and hats for other candidates including Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush) are made by a Newark company, Unionwear. Lean is their strategy and their production system. That’s how they are competing against China.
My friend Pete Abilla has started a nice series of “Lean Leadership Interviews” on his site, shmula.com. I enjoyed his most recent interview with Jeff Liker. I agree with Pete and Jeff in the assertion (shared by Mike Rother) that…
Mark’s note: Today’s vacation post is from my good friend Dan Markovitz, who normally blogs here. Listen to my podcasts with him here and here. By Dan Markovitz: You’d think by now we’d be past this sort of nonsense that…
Hat tip to Dan Markovitz for pointing out this excellent post on John Toussaint’s blog: “The Key Leadership Behaviors in a Lean Organization?” The post is a letter written by Paul O’Neill answering a question from a hospital leader. Paul…
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by Dan Markovitz Best Buy is generally not talked about as an exemplar of lean. (It’s best known for its Results Only Work Environment; read about ROWE here and here.) But yesterday’s WSJ article on Best Buy shows that the…