I don’t think I’m smart enough to figure out the root cause of this healthcare dysfunction. I went to the dentist this morning and the office manager said “Aetna still hasn’t paid for your last visit”. This was five months…
Little Elm bans outdoor watering I saw this on the local TV news this morning about a small North Texas town that has taken the extreme step of banning ALL outdoor watering because city supplies are low. How did this…
Drug in Fatal Medical Error A Known Hazard in Hospitals | theledger.com Here is another sad example of the need for lean methods for quality improvement in healthcare. The story here is about a pregnant woman who died after being…
From the June 26th edition of Business Week, The Welch Way by Jack and Suzy Welch was called Stop the B.S. Budget (need subscription to read). I probably will not get much argument from people on this: budgeting as it…
Ford’s Swipe At Toyota Sounds “Desperate” So we’ve been reading all year about Mark Fields, who has the best executive mullet (a.ka. “hockey hair“) I’ve seen in some time, and his “Way Forward” plan for saving Ford. From a marketing…
News From PC Magazine: Can You Really Buy An American PC? Yes you can, it depends on what you mean by “American.” Dell has always built desktop PC’s and servers here in the U.S. By “built”, I mean “assembled”, as…
Dell: Facing Up To Past Mistakes I’ve written about this before and I think this article highlights some of the key differences between Toyota and Dell. Dell’s “Direct Model” has often been compared to Toyota and is sometimes called “lean”.…
Did I get your attention? OK, it was a misleading headline, sort of. Certainly, productivity and quality are important, as are safety and on-time delivery (remember the mantra of Safety, Quality, Delivery, and Cost). Look at this case here: the…
Continuing on the tour (click here for previous stops), we step back into the National Museum of American History, where they had some fantastic displays of early American manufacturing. One display case featured the rifles from the Harpers Ferry Armory,…
Google Trends: lean manufacturing, toyota production system, lean production, lean enterprise There’s a new Google tool that lets you see trends in search activity over time and against other search terms. Click on the link above and you’ll see that…
So I’m trying to find a dermatologist to schedule an appoint (no it’s nothing serious). What amazes me is that all of the dermatologists in a reasonable driving distance have no open appointments until September or October. Talk about the…
Working from home today, I ran out during lunch time (actually after lunch time in my effort to help level load area businesses) to the bank. As I entered, I saw this sign. By “ways to serve you better”, I…
