Thanks, as always, to Ryan McCormack for this. He always shares so much good reading, listening, and viewing here! Subscribe to get these directly from Ryan via email. News, articles, books, podcasts, and videos about how to make the workplace…
TL;DR: I asked ChatGPT how to use Lean to reduce hospital headcount. It gave me a detailed plan to do exactly that. My custom Lean AI refused and explained why. Generic AI will confidently help you damage your culture. I…
TL;DR: If Lean improvements put jobs at risk, people will stop improving. Organizations that commit to “no layoffs due to Lean” create trust, unlock ideas, and sustain better performance. When I worked with Johnson & Johnson’s ValuMetrix Services consulting group…
One of the most important, and most misunderstood, principles in Lean thinking is this: Lean is not a cost-cutting strategy. Lean is a people-development strategy. If your organization is using Lean as a tool to justify layoffs, you’re not practicing…
Scroll down for video, transcript, how to subscribe, and more My guest for Episode #407 of the Lean Blog Interviews podcast is Joy Mason, a Strategist, Author, Speaker, and Entrepreneur based in Indianapolis. She is President and Senior Business Strategist…
I take no joy in the troubles of any automaker, be it Tesla, Nissan, GM or any others over time.
Of course, Nissan and GM have been in the news most recently, with the firing (and jailing) of Nissan and Renault CEO Carlos Ghosn. And now, GM has announced major layoffs, the cancelation of some passenger car programs, and the shutdown (and possible closure) of five plants in North America.
I was talking to a friend the other day and I predicted that we'd see news headlines about something like "GM to get Leaner." These headlines would be using the word "lean" to mean "get smaller" instead of referring to "Lean" (which I capitalize as a proper noun) as a synonym for the Toyota Production System.
I was disappointed to hear GM's CEO, Mary Barra, a long-time GM employee using the word "lean" in the context of the company getting smaller.
Again, Tesla and their CEO Elon Musk are generating a lot of news and, I think, many things to think about, even if the lessons learned are, perhaps, about things NOT to do in our organizations.
See previous posts about Tesla
As you might know, Tesla has been very much behind schedule with their Model 3 production ramp up. Last week, we saw news stories about a production shutdown that's intended to get things back on track:
"Tesla Is Temporarily Shutting Down Model 3 Production. Again."
Are short-term layoffs the best thing to do for the long term?
I’ve heard a lot of rumblings recently about what might be happening at ThedaCare, a health system in Wisconsin that’s been considered one of the best examples of "Lean healthcare" anywhere in the world for more than a decade. It seems that there is an evolution occurring in their approach to Lean.
I’ve received a formal statement from ThedaCare public relations, which you can find in this post, so I will stick to the facts that they have given me and other information that's publicly available online.
Here is the headline from the Dallas Morning News: "How Toyota improved Parkland Hospital's ER -- with purple lights."
I'll give credit to Dr. Fred Cerise, the CEO of Parkland Memorial Hospital, for reaching out to Toyota and TSSC for help...
Art Byrne's latest book, The Lean Turnaround Action Guide, has a lot of great tips that he's trying to share, CEO to CEO. How many CEOs are reading this book and heeding his advice, in manufacturing or in healthcare?
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.
I saw this article a few days ago in one of the larger healthcare industry trade publications: How One Woman Saved IU Health $54 Million The headline is misleading, as addressed in the opening sentence / sub-headline of the story (via HealthLeaders): “With a little help from about 10,000 of her friends and colleagues, the head