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GE Gets a Lean CEO, From the Outside: Larry Culp

Jet lag, even well managed and planned for, meant I was awake early on a Sunday morning. Over breakfast, I read more about news from last week, that GE had fired their CEO John Flannery after 14 months and replaced him with a relatively new board member, Larry Culp.

Culp is GE's first outsider CEO hire in their 100+ year history. So who is this guy and why did they hire him?

Culp was CEO of Danaher, a company that's quite often held up as the best non-Toyota Lean company out there. And they're an American company. Danaher, through its Danaher Business System (DBS) approach, uses Lean as a business strategy in a way that's very different than Toyota. Danaher has acquired companies and brought DBS and Lean in as a way to turn around and improve those businesses.

Kaizen at Garrison Brothers: Improving the Bourbon Bottle Dipping Process

I'm excited that our sold-out "Symposium on Learning Organizations" group will be visiting Toyota's San Antonio plant on Wednesday. Later that day, we'll be touring the Garrison Brothers Distillery and, on Thursday, we are using their "barrel barn" as a venue for "Open Space" discussions, the Red Bead Experiment, and more. We have a group of 40 from many industries attending and we might run a similar event in a different location in the future.

I've blogged about Garrison Brothers and my stint as a bottling line volunteer before...

In that post, I shared pictures of me working to dip bottles of bourbon into a sealing wax. I was wearing a winter coat because it was February in Texas and there was a bit of snow and ice that week.

When I was back there recently, I saw some additional improvements that seem like "Kaizen" to me. 

It’s Exciting to See an “Idea Board” at Buffalo Trace Distillery

Thanks to posting about the trip on LinkedIn, I learned that Mike Bukowski is now working for Sazerac, the parent company of Buffalo Trace, in a process improvement role. Last year, Mike attended the site visit and class that Joe Swartz and I hosted at Franciscan St. Francis Health.

Mike has embraced might call "lessons from Toyota," as taught to healthcare people, and is now training and coaching people who make some very fine bourbon, including Aaron Krentz, Processing Supervisor (at right).

Is a Drop in Kaizen Submissions a Real Signal or Just Noise?

Last week, I wrote Part 1 of this piece about TQM and "Small Kaizen" at a Japanese Hospital pharmacy.

The hospital was happy that employees were participating in their "Small Kaizen" process, but there was a month in which they saw the number of submitted Kaizens drop, from about 138 to 58 or so.

As I write about in Measures of Success, two data points usually don't make a trend.

Small Kaizen in a Japanese Hospital Pharmacy: Big Improvements Without Big Projects

I'm overdue in writing more about my last trip to Japan a few months back.

Today, I'll like to share some highlights from one organization we visited, Seki Chuo Hospital, which is located outside of Nagoya. I have visited this hospital in 2012 and 2014 and it's interesting to see how their approach to Total Quality Management (TQM), Lean, and Kaizen has progressed and evolved. I mentioned them in a 2014 post about "quality circles."

Overreact Less, Improve More: Leadership Lessons from Statistics and Psychology

Happy and sad emoji faces on a fluctuating line graph.

Today, I’m giving a keynote talk at the Lean & Six Sigma World Conference being held in Las Vegas. I don’t normally attend or speak at “Lean Sigma” events, but I had an opportunity to give a new talk that touches on two of my favorite themes in recent years – the need to apply statistics and psychology to our “Lean Management” practices or Six Sigma or whatever.

“So why are you here in Japan?” Kaizen, Popularity, Fads, and Sustainment

Monday, I blogged about the sushi-making class I took on my last Sunday in Japan. Later that same Sunday, I did a walking food tour in the Shibuya area. Walking food tours are a great way to explore and learn about a city.

In our small group, there was a couple from Australia and a retired couple from South Africa.

Between stops on the tour, the South African gentleman, a retired mining company manager or executive, asked me why I was there in Japan for work.

What Japan Taught Me About Lean, Standardized Work, and Following the Rules

Last week, I got back from my third trip to Japan and we visited three hospitals, Toyota, another manufacturer, and heard from a cafeteria services company leader about their Lean and continuous improvement journeys. As I've blogged about before, some of these organizations have been practicing TQM for 30 years and are adding elements of Lean methods on top of that foundation.

I'm hardly an expert on Japan. I still feel like I view the country with fresh eyes.

Standards and Standardized Work... at Work

During this trip, I heard a number of people talk about the cultural imperative about following rules and laws. In the workplace, we might call these rules "standardized work"...

Santa’s Little Kaizeneers?

Thanks to my friend Sylvain for sending me this cartoon. It would have been more timely for me to share this before Christmas, but there's an opportunity for improvement.

The cartoon series is called Real Life Adventures by Gary Wise and Lance Aldrich. This particular cartoon appeared on December 13, 2017.

Here's the top part... please click through to their website to see the entire cartoon and I'll talk about it here in this post, sharing links to other blog posts and videos on the topic.

More Thoughts on the Next Japan Lean & Kaizen Study Trip

Again, there's still time to sign up for the next Lean and Kaizen study trip to Japan that I'm facilitating with Kaizen Institute, from February 26 to March 2, 2018. There's still room in the tour if you'd like to join us.

In this post, I share some of my thoughts - answers to questions posed by Kaizen Institute. And, I share some thoughts from Risa Cox, from Kaizen Institute.

Throwback Thursday: A Look Back at Japan #Lean Healthcare Study Trips

For today's Throwback Thursday, I'd like to look back at some blog posts about the trips I took to Japan in 2012 and 2014 to study Lean healthcare and Kaizen with healthcare practitioners from around the world.

I'm again partnering with Kaizen Institute to plan and help lead a trip that will be held in the last week of February, as I wrote about here...