Following The Toyota Way, For Better Or Worse : NPR (listen or read) I’ll hand it to NPR, they generally do a much better job understanding and covering Toyota than the Wall Street Journal, NY Times, or Reuters. Tuesday, there…
No. Toyota’s factories do not run a formal Six Sigma program, and they do not hand out belts. What Toyota does teach, broadly and without much ceremony, is basic quality control and statistical thinking, the kind of tools that predate…
It’s once again my pleasure to host the Carnival for John Hunter and his Curious Cat blog. There are many excellent and thought provoking posts from the past month. I hope you’ll discover a new blog or two (or new…
So I’m finally watching the DVR-ed episode from March 10, 2009, that gave widespread exposure to the issue of medical mistakes. Oprah began the show by citing the statistic that errors cause more deaths than “breast cancer, AIDS, and car…
Device Alerts Doctors To Items Left Behind After Surgery – Indiana News Story – WRTV Indianapolis Healthcare is often stuck in the mindset that’s considered outdated in lean manufacturing settings — the old idea that better quality must inherently cost…
Dennis Quaid Takes Oprah To Hospital That OD’d His Babies This might be the first time I’m DVR-ing the Oprah show. Tomorrow, actor Dennis Quaid will talk about the medical errors that nearly killed his twin babies. For the first…
I’m getting some really interesting and constructive comments in my reader survey. Keep it coming. I’ll reflect, summarize, and respond to it here on the blog or personally via email. Thanks to those who have taken the time. One comment…
Donald Berwick: Curing the Healthcare System – BusinessWeek Good exposure for the applicability and use of Lean concepts in healthcare in BusinessWeek. Dr. Berwick is the head of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (based in Cambridge, coincidentally, like the Lean…
My Way News – Lost tool bag forces changes to planned spacewalks This makes wonder if the space program uses any concepts that we’d call “Lean” even if they don’t. This story makes me think of Error Proofing, Standardized Work,…
Kevin Meyer, over at Evolving Excellence, recently wrote a good piece on “endorsing” a U.S. presidential candidate. Today, I’m technically Constitution-eligible to be President of the United States, as I’m now 35 years young. However, I’m not nominating myself to…
Official Gmail Blog: New in Labs: Stop sending mail you later regret Ha, this isn’t an “error proofing” service I would need anymore, but it might be helpful for our younger (say early 20’s) readers. It’s a google Gmail setting…
Heparin errors and patient harm have been in the news quite a bit the last few years. So what are hospital regulators doing about it? Let’s look at the time line here: 2006: Heparin error kills 3 babies in Indianapolis…