TL;DR: “Lean is for speed, Six Sigma is for quality” is a false trade-off. Lean improves flow by removing obstacles like waiting and rework–and when work flows better, quality improves too. High-performing teams don’t choose between speed and execution; they…
Joining me today for Episode #384 of the podcast is Craig Gygi, co-author of the book Six Sigma for Dummies. He also managing principal and owner of the firm Strategic Productivity. You can read his full bio there. He also…
Hi, it’s episode 5 of our “Lean Whiskey” podcast where we mostly talk about Lean and maybe chat just little bit about whiskey. Joining me today is a guest host, my friend Paul Critchley. Paul has been a guest blogger…
I'm happy to be hosting, via KaiNexus, another free webinar. Click the link below to register:
How One Community Hospital is Creating a Culture of Continuous Improvement
November 28 from 1:00 - 2:00 pm ET
Presented by Mike McGowan, Director of Process Excellence at Marietta Memorial Hospital
This post also includes thoughts from the KaiNexus community about challenges and barriers to improvement and innovation.
One challenge with teaching Lean is that there isn’t always a consistent definition that’s used by everybody. Here’s how I define it: What Is Lean? A Practical Guide to Lean Thinking and Management. Some of the definitions are really bad.…
Thanks to GoLeanSixSigma.com for asking me some questions for a discussion that they've posted on their website. On the pet peeves issue, I tried to address, in particular, some of the "Lean Sigma" stuff that I have blogged about here on this site...
My guest for Episode #274 of the podcast is Jay Arthur, author of Lean Six Sigma for Hospitals: Improving Patient Safety, Patient Flow and the Bottom Line, Second Edition. To me, "Lean Sigma" is often a controversial topic... not because anything is wrong with Six Sigma…
TL;DR: Lean isn’t about “idiot-proofing” work–it’s about respecting people. True Lean focuses on improving systems (through mistake-proofing and better design), not blaming or deceiving workers. When leaders treat people as capable professionals and fix processes instead of people, quality, learning,…
As is often the case, I have too many open browser tabs full of articles that I was going to potentially blog about. This slows down my Mac (thanks, Chrome!). So, it’s time for me to clear out my backlog and…
In this post, I’ll present a parody video of Keith Olbermann‘s “worst persons in the sports world” videos. I don’t know how much overlap there is between people who read my blog and people who are fans of Olbermann. I’ve…
The One Thing Lean Six Sigma Gets Wrong About Lean? Mark’s Note: Today’s post is by Erwin van der Koogh, who is based in Australia. The thoughts and opinions here are his, though I agree with enough of them to…
Last weekend, at a patient safety conference, I heard a physician talk about “robust process improvement” and this, thankfully, included an endorsement of Lean methods. That’s the good news. The bad news was that the physician who was presenting trotted…
