After a week of serious topics and sometimes pointed discussion, let’s end with a funny sign… well wait, there’s a serious story behind this sign too. This is a sign from a New Zealand hospital, sent via email by a…
On a recent Sunday morning, I was watching cable news channels and two different commercials had a word jump out at me, words that are commonly used in the Lean management system. One commercial featured the term “mistake proofed” and…
In the news yesterday, a General Motors recall over what could be just one isolated steering wheel problem in an Ohio-built Chevrolet (don’t call it Chevy) Cruze. Most news stories, like this one, about the recall just mention that one…
Back in 2011, I shared a draft of the final chapter from the first edition of Lean Hospitals and invited readers to contribute their thoughts on “A Vision for a Lean Hospital.” The responses were thoughtful, insightful, and helped shape…
A few weeks ago, I saw a horrific story about a retail pharmacy error in the article “Pharmacy Mistakenly Gives Pregnant Woman Abortion Pill.” Mareena Silva was mistakenly given the wrong drug by her Safeway pharmacy, which means she might…
Just before the new year, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch featured the Lean efforts at Barnes-Jewish Hospital (“St. Louis hospital among handful using efficiency to aid patients“). I think it’s more than a “handful” of hospitals around the world using Lean…
You might remember me blogging about the Indianapolis incident where three babies died after being mistakenly given an adult dose of heparin back in 2007. The same set of failure modes led to a non-fatal overdose of actor Dennis Quaid’s…
Yesterday, I tweeted a quote about patient safety that I’ve seen posted on the wall or bulletin board in many hospitals: “To err is human, to cover up is unforgivable, and to fail to learn is inexcusable.” – Sir Liam…
There’s a series of airplane photos, of South Africa’s Kalula Airlines, that have been going around the web, including being posted in some blogs as an example of the Lean principle of “visual management,” like this one: It made me…
I’ll start the week with another post about my tour of the TMMTX (Toyota Motor Manufacturing Texas) plant in San Antonio. Today, I’ll write about the visitor center – other than having Toyota vehicles on display, what does the company…
This blog post is about my first visit to TMMTX in 2010.
Here are a few events I’ll be a part of in the next few months, maybe I’ll see you there: Cindy Jimmerson’s “Big Sky” Lean Leadership Retreat, Sept 20-22 Michigan Lean Consortium’s Lean Healthcare Event, Sept 28 LEI “Key Concepts…