One wouldn’t expect to find a depiction of a hospital setting with poor “5S” practices on the show Family Guy – of course, depending on your personality and sense of humor, you might not expect to find anything of value…
Today, July 7, is the birthday of Frank Gilbreth, born this day in 1868. While some of his methods arguably ranked low on the “respect for people” scale (calling doctors “boobs” for doing things wastefully), he was an innovator in…
Something Lean is in the water in Wisconsin, as that state is one of the hotbeds of Lean healthcare. There’s, of course, the ThedaCare story (from Appleton) and the upcoming book about their journey (“On the Mend: Revolutionizing Healthcare to…
The Winnipeg Free Press has an article about their local St. Boniface Hospital, a member of the LEI/ThedaCare network I’m involved with called the Healthcare Value Network. About 40 of us from different Network member organizations visited last Thursday and…
Unlike Thursday’s joke, this is real. It’s a video posted by the Association for Manufacturing Excellence (AME), featuring a full-time Lean professional, a “kaizen facilitator,” who is in the third year of coaching a youth (teenagers) hockey team in Ontario.…
Note: I edited the post title on April 3 to make it clear this was an April Fool’s Joke. Comments posted by readers on 4/1 and 4/2 may have been “fooled” – thanks for taking the joke in good spirits.…
Hat tip to my friend Jack for pointing out these short videos from the Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative (PRHI) that they call “Teachable Moments.” The first video I saw was just about 3 minutes long, perfect for YouTube and Twitter-era…
Keeping things light on a Saturday… New York Magazine has a funny photo story series of President Obama on tours of different factories and laboratories (hat tip to @counternotions on Twitter). The series is called “A History of Obama Feigning…
TL;DR: An NPR story about workplace “efficiency” illustrates L.A.M.E.–Lean As Misguidedly Executed–where tools like 5S are applied without respect for people or employee engagement. True Lean builds capability with the people doing the work, not through top-down cost cutting. Oh…
Mark’s note: I’ve known Bruce Baker for a few years as a thoughtful commenter here on the Lean Blog. I was thrilled when he started his own blog, Lean Is Good, as it’s quickly become one of my favorites in…
Today was an exciting day at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement‘s 21st annual National Forum on Healthcare Quality Improvement. It’s my first time here, to learn and network. They have over 5,000 attendees who are committed to quality and patient…
It’s time for some coffee talk other than Starbucks… afternoon coffee break here. In Philadelphia last week during our LEI workshops (have you seen our new web design?), I was there three days, teaching my workshop for two and attending…
