While I'm writing here about Northwestern men's basketball learning from Duke (without copying everything), the same ideas apply if you're Ford learning from Toyota or a hospital learning from ThedaCare.
I continue sharing documents from the Don Ephlin library archive. What did Ford and the UAW learn when they visited Japan in 1981? Many of the things that made Japanese industry successful are the same things that make organizations successful with Lean today, including in healthcare.
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...
The phrase “Lean journey” is used widely to describe an organization’s transformation over time. It’s either a phrase that invokes helpful imagery or it’s a horrible cliché. I was speaking at a Lean event last week and I kept hearing…
Today’s post is something that I wrote for a broader LinkedIn audience, but might have meaning and significance to my Lean readers: “What Bad Managers, Good Managers, and Great Managers Do“ You can also read this on Medium.com. You might…
tl;dr: Lean is not just about speed or efficiency. Lean, properly understood, improves flow and quality at the same time–along with safety, cost, and morale. The idea that Lean “makes bad stuff faster” is a persistent Lean Six Sigma myth…
Bob Lutz spent 47 years in the auto industry at GM, Ford, BMW, and Chrysler, and in this 2011 conversation he talks about his book Car Guys vs. Bean Counters, the “blanderizer” effect on product design, and why he thinks…
On Friday, there was yet another Wall Street Journal article about Lean (fixating as they always do on the “Just In Time” component). The article titled “For Lean Factories, No Buffer” yet again takes an outdated 1980s view that Lean…
Due out in June is a book that I think will be an important one for the Lean Healthcare movement. That book is about the Lean journey of the Wisconsin health system ThedaCare. It’s called On the Mend: Transforming Healthcare…
This sign and picture might be a bit rude, so I saved this for a Saturday. To me, a very powerful and often unknown principle of the Toyota Production System and Lean is the idea that managers must “explain why”…
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…
I’ve written before about the “Ask Me” campaign that runs in many hospitals, usually in context of “ask me if I’ve washed my hands.” One hospital runs a slight variation of the buttons and a sign campaign that encourages patients,…
