The BBC radio program “The Science Hour” recently aired a program with a segment where an unexpected person (Dr. Kevin Fong) to an unexpected place (UCLA Harbor Medical Center) to look into “Lean.” You might remember UCLA Harbor from my…
Now, there’s a story written by an emergency medicine physician, Dr. Brad Cotton, that appears in a publication called “Emergency Medicine News” — FIRST PERSON: ‘We Fired Our Hospital’...
I’ve been studying and working with Lean for 20 years now and I love Lean because I’m still learning and getting better at this craft. I love seeing other people get excited about Lean when it’s new to them, when…
The phrase “Lean journey” is used widely to describe an organization’s transformation over time. It’s either a phrase that invokes helpful imagery or it’s a horrible cliché. I was speaking at a Lean event last week and I kept hearing…
When we introduce the idea of Lean to healthcare organizations, it’s very common for somebody (often a senior physician) to say something like, “But we don’t want assembly line medicine.” The implication is that assembly lines and factories are cold,…
Lean provides a philosophy and a management model that should be nothing but good for staff and patients. The idea of “respect for people” might sound nice in principle, but what does it mean in a practical sense...
Last week, I wrote a post (part 1) looking back at our visit to the Toyota Tsutsumi factory that was part of our Japan tour that took place two months ago now. See previous posts in this series. I’m going to try to…
Announcement: Dr. Greg Jacobson and I are doing a new webinar for KaiNexus on “More Leadership Behaviors That Create a Culture of Continuous Improvement‘” on January 27. It’s free… learn more and register here. * * * * * *…
I travel a lot and, thanks to my work, I’m pretty well attuned to the idea of not blaming individuals for systemic problems in an organization. Or, at least I try to be good about this. I’m human, so I…
TL;DR: Toyota isn’t abandoning the Andon system–it’s evolving it. Switching from cords to buttons improves safety and usability, while keeping the core Lean principle intact: speak up, respond fast, and fix problems where they occur. Over the past decade, Toyota…
In November 2012, I had the opportunity to visit Japan for the first time as part of a Lean healthcare study mission. It was fascinating to compare notes with colleagues from the U.S., Belgium, and Holland as we visited factories,…
This week starts the celebration of International Nurses Week, which leads up to Nurses Day on May 12, which is the birthday of the legendary Florence Nightingale. Hug a nurse today. Or do whatever you can to help. Nurses are…