Tag: Kaizen

Not all Japanese companies are the same. "Lean isn't easy" if you're a Japanese company. Toyota has created something special, since "Toyota culture" is not exactly the same as "Japanese culture." The WSJ says the "model is cracking." Do scandals involving quality and ethical lapses involving companies including those and Nissan tarnish Lean and the Toyota Production System? No. That's as silly as thinking the Wells Fargo banking scandal tarnishes Silicon Valley (although the Valley does enough to tarnish itself).

Joining me again for episode #299 of the podcast is Joe Swartz, my friend and esteemed co-author for our books Healthcare Kaizen: Engaging Front-Line Staff in Sustainable Continuous Improvements and The Executive Guide to Healthcare Kaizen: Leadership for a Continuously Learning and Improving Organization.

This Thursday, we'll be hosting a webinar presented by a former Toyota engineer, Jess Orr. She will be sharing lessons learned at Toyota about the A3 problem-solving methodology, referred to there as "Toyota Business Practices." In particular, Jess will be sharing a case study about using the A3 approach to improving communication.

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.

When I shared a link to my post about applying Kaizen to my websites, I was asked a fascinating question on LinkedIn last week: "What was your very first process improvement?" In this post, I answer that question.

I do my best to practice what I preach. I'm not perfect, by any means, but I'm pretty good about practicing the "Kaizen" style of continuous improvement. In this post, I share three recent examples of my Kaizen efforts for LeanBlog.org, JapanLeanTrip.com, and LeanHospitalsBook.com.

Today's post is written by Steve Hoeft, the SVP, Chief of Operations Excellence at Baylor Scott & White Health (BSWH) here in Texas. This is his first written contribution to Lean Blog, but you might remember him as a guest in episode #226 of my podcast, where he and co-author Dr. Bob Pryor talked about their book The Power of Ideas to Transform Healthcare: Engaging Staff by Building Daily Lean Management Systems. His article begins: "In my years serving as continuous improvement leader and consultant for some great organizations, I've discovered something consistent: Improvement will not happen on its own."

Tomorrow, with the entire KaiNexus team, I'm going to visit the Toyota truck plant in San Antonio, the plant referred TMMTX. The 15 of us will be there in closed toed shoes and all other required clothing to learn about the Toyota Production System, Kaizen (continuous improvement), and Lean. I've blogged about it on the KaiNexus blog. I asked the KaiNexus team to say a little bit about what they hope to learn in the visit and you can read their comments it here. In this post, I share a 24-minute tour preview webinar that I put together, links to past tour blog posts, and more.

Come join me and Kaizen Institute in the last week of February as we lead a study trip to Japan. This will be my third trip to Japan and I'm very excited... we still have space in the group if you can join us.

As you might know from episode #290 of my podcast with Eric Ries on Monday, his new book was released on Tuesday: The Startup Way: How...

This Business Insider article caught my eye the other day: A celebrity chef who owns 26 restaurants explains why he loves when employees shoot down...

I've blogged about football before - I should say "American football," since I have many international readers. I should say I've blogged about events on the football field and the approaches of football coaches that remind me of Lean thinking. Here are a few of those thoughts from last weekend -- topics include "lack of urgency," "that's not my job," and "the process."