Today is the first day of the 5th annual Lean Healthcare Transformation Summit. Follow along on Twitter with hashtag #HCSummit14 to see my tweets and thoughts from others. I will be adding updates to this post during the day, as well. These are not…
In the Kaizen process, we ask everyone–regardless of role or title–to identify problems (or opportunities) in their daily work. They’re encouraged to write down an idea that might solve the problem–or at least move things in the right direction. What’s…
My guest for episode #193 is Mark Jaben, MD, talking about our brains, Lean, and change. Mark has been a guest blogger for me before and it’s great to talk to him today about his research and experiences. In our conversation,…
Mark’s note: What follows is a guest post by Keivan Zokaei about the necessary and unsurprisingly overlap between Lean principles and environmental stewardship. I wrote about this dynamic in a 2010 blog post: “Lean Leads to Green, Which Supports Lean,”…
Hosted by Steve Hoeft, author of the book Stories from My Sensei: Two Decades of Lessons Learned Implementing Toyota-Style Systems, I had a chance to visit Scott & White Hospital in Temple, Texas. With his permission (but without editorial review),…
Here’s a fascinating article: “How Toyota brought its famed manufacturing method to India.” The piece starts with a story about a classic Toyota management practice — “Genchi Genbutsu, or on-site inspection, which is at the core of the Toyota Production…
As we enter the new year, it’s a great time to reflect back on 2012 – what worked and what didn’t work… what do we plan to do differently in 2013? Those are some of the core questions found on…
As are many people across the United States and around the world, I’m saddened by the violence that claimed so many lives Friday in Newtown, Connecticut at Sandy Hook Elementary School. The mass shootings that plague our country are incredibly…
If your organization blocks access to YouTube… shame on them. The videos I’m sharing here are two reasons you should insist they open access to the world of Lean healthcare education that exists there. Today, I’m sharing two videos produced…
TL;DR: In Lean problem solving, the hardest habit to break is jumping to solutions too early. Effective PDCA and A3 thinking require discipline in problem definition, understanding the current state, and resisting blame-driven shortcuts. Organizations that slow down to define…
The country’s largest public health system, the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation has two Lean healthcare jobs available and they’ve asked me to post them here. Carlos Scholz writes: We have 2 open positions for Lean Facilitators/Trainers at…
After my first experiment with the great Leanpub.com service (my “Best of Lean Blog 2011” eBook), I was happy to see my good friend Jamie Flinchbaugh experiment with publishing some original content on that site. Jamie’s new book is A3…
