Healthcare – Creating Value for Patients Developing a culture of patient safety requires the ability to raise risks without fear of reprisal. This post from leanblog.org about a nurse who failed to report a critical incident for fear of being immediately…
Ryan and I are co-sponsoring a workshop that I’ll be presenting on “Measures of Success” in Winnipeg on May 10. Learn more. Healthcare – Creating Value for Patients A hospital in India continues to develop world-class surgical practices at a…
Hi All – here’s a collection of the most read Mixtape links from 2018. I compiled the links with the greatest number of viewers and then organized them into some themes. Enjoy! Setting goals and developing effective and actionable KPIs is a…
Yesterday, I saw this headline from the Associated Press:
"Tatsuro Toyoda, former head of Toyota, dies at 88"
He passed away on December 30, 2017. I offer my condolences to his family, friends, and colleagues.
In this post, I share some of his history and some reflections from two Americans who worked with him directly.
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.
I was happy to see an engineer (Chemical Engineering) and a General Motors leader, Alicia Boler Davis, on the cover of the Northwestern University alumni magazine. See this profile and story: “DRIVING GM“ My wife is an engineer and a…
I recently wrote about my exploration of the collected papers of the late Don Ephlin, a UAW senior leader and a professor of mine at MIT. In that first post, I shared a few quotes scattered throughout the original NUMMI Team…
Recently, when I posted a bit from the old 1984 NUMMI Team Member Handbook (more still to come on that), it allowed me to connect with Tom Wilson, a retired GM leader who spent time at NUMMI in the 1980s. In…
In healthcare, it’s a well-known problem that people often don’t speak up to point out risks or to report near misses. It’s an organizational culture problem… people are afraid of being blamed, punished, or retaliated against for speaking up. A…
Editor’s note (2026): This post remains highly relevant as organizations increasingly rely on algorithmic scheduling, utilization targets, and AI-driven workforce planning. TL;DR: Zeynep Ton’s Good Jobs Strategy shows that cutting labor costs creates a vicious cycle of poor performance. In…
Listen: Episode #110 is a chat with Dr. Jack Billi from the University of Michigan Health System and Medical School. Here, we talk about their lean work and how Dr. Billi works with physicians to engage them in lean, tying…
