Every time I am in a hospital or clinic setting, one of the first things I do is get a pump or squirt of gel or foam from a wall-mounted dispenser to clean my hands. Or, I should say *try*…
TL;DR: A look back at Lean manufacturing training from 2002 reveals a familiar lesson: Lean succeeds when customers treat suppliers fairly, production schedules are stable, and improvement goes beyond tools to include respect, trust, and Kaizen thinking. Toyota’s approach–then and…
This article caught my attention the other day, primarily because I like scotch, whisky (and whiskey and bourbon). The Japanese love scotch whisky and have long produced a product that’s a variation of scotch — Japanese whisky (the lack of…
Back in 2011, I wrote this homage to In-N-Out Burger. Their food is awesome, they treat managers and employees with respect, and they pay attention to details. One such example is the simple error proofing of their trashcans, as I wrote…
Following up my earlier post about the “Patriot Way…” During her halftime extravaganza (video), Katy Perry had a silver strap around her wrist, attached to the microphone. It reminded me of the Nintendo Wii strap that helps prevent throwing the controller (Update:…
Mark’s Note: Today’s guest post is by Chris Burnham. I invited him to write this after I saw him share his pre-surgical “poka yoke” (or error proofing) on Twitter (caution: picture of feet). I asked him if “anybody was offended”…
We all know the beaver is “the engineer of the animal kingdom.” That’s why MIT has a beaver as a mascot… It’s an engineer who likes to build things and is generally nocturnal, an apt description of MIT students. A…
You might remember that I partnered with Kaizen Institute about two years ago to do their first “Lean Healthcare Study Tour” to Japan. I blogged a bit about the last trip last week. It was a great learning experience, as…
Mark’s Note: Today’s post is by Andy Wagner, who contributed regularly to this blog from 2007 to 2010. This CNN video caught his eye and he couldn’t help blogging about it. Recently, CNN ran a short piece on Worksman Cycles…
I didn’t know , until yesterday, that Toyota has an official company blog (at least for Toyota UK). Even though I’ve learned from Toyota people and many books and classes (and I’ve written books of my own), I always encourage…
Yesterday, Jim Benson and I were facilitating a “Lean for Knowledge Work” class at Geekdom in San Antonio and had a great time with attendees from healthcare and high tech companies. We facilitated some “Lean Coffee” discussion sessions in a…
Mark’s note: Ah, another NFL playoff weekend and time for another football post to follow up my apparent jinxing of the Eagles’ head coach Chip Kelly last week. Today’s guest post from Chad Walters is an intersection between sports, medicine,…
