Tag: Deming
Podcast #278 – Tom Bouthillet, Lean in Fire Fighting (the Real...
People often talk about “fire fighting” in a colloquial way. Today, my guest for episode #278 of the podcast is an actual professional fire fighter, Tom Bouthillet, who serves as Fire Captain / Paramedic for the Hilton Head Island Fire Rescue...
Measures, Incentives, Heart Attack Mortality, Driving Safety, and Statistical Thinking
In this post, I look at the impact (or lack thereof) of targets, rankings, and incentives, when it comes to safe driving or PCI (angioplasty) procedures in a hospital cath lab. Are we improving? How do we know? How do we improve?
James Hereford – A #Lean COO from Stanford Becomes a Lean...
In today's post, I write about James Hereford, a Lean thinker and leader who is now CEO of Fairview Health Services in Minnesota. I share some links to and highlights from a past podcast with him and other blog posts with his thoughts.
Dr. Deming on Why Improvement Stalls Out, Today’s Hospital Patient Safety...
Can leaders get some improvement just by asking for it? Does improvement stall out if we don't have a method for doing so? What can "process behavior" charts show us in our work today?
Learning Not to Blame: Spring Training Baseball Edition
Lean thinkers do their best to avoid blaming individuals for systemic problems. This lesson comes also from W. Edwards Deming who was deeply influential...
Your “Lean Daily Management” Approach Would Be Even Better with Some...
Here is an article that I wrote and published on LinkedIn on Tuesday on the topic of managing metrics in a better, less wasteful, less frustrating, and more productive manner.
Meeting A Professional Hero: Donald J. Wheeler, PhD, of “Understanding Variation”
I recently got to meet Prof. Donald J. Wheeler when he gave a keynote talk at the Society for Health Systems Conference. Check out his book Understanding Variation and learn more about him in this post.
#TBT: Past Posts About the Society for Health Systems
Today is the start of the main days of the annual Society for Health Systems Conference. I think this is my 9th year attending out of the past 11 or so. Follow the action on Twitter using hashtag #SHS2017. Here are a few posts from the past conferences:
Without Kaizen, There Can Be No Accountability
During the class, there was a case study discussion about a hospital that was trying to solve the problem of nurses not always scanning patient bar codes and medications 100% of the time. In the discussion, I was disappointed that an attendee fell back on saying...
The Oscars, An Embarrassing Preventable Error, #Lean, and Process Improvement
Alternative headline: “Poorly Designed Card Trips Up Beatty and Dunaway at The Oscars.” Or “A Bad Process Beats Warren Beatty Every Time.” What are the Lean lessons from this mistake?
Lessons Ford & the UAW Learned in Japan in 1981 Still...
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.
#TBT: My Reflections on Dr. Deming’s Notes from a 1987 Hospital...
Today's post points to my guest blog post for the W. Edwards Deming Institute: Reflections on Dr. Deming's Hospital Notes - What Has Changed Since 1990? Why do the same problems that Dr. Deming experienced as a patient 30 years ago still happen so often today?
