The past two weeks have been very busy, to say the least. Thanks to the guest bloggers who contributed posts to help reduce my personal overburden (this particular overburden, of course, being a “First World Problem,” as they say). My…
Mark's note: Today's post is by Paul Critchley and he raises important questions that I've seen in both factories and hospitals. Here's his post... As I've moved through my career and Lean journey, I've been blessed to have met and worked with some really fantastic people...
I’ve been a happy DirecTV customer since 2007, when I switched from cable so I could get the Big Ten Network when it launched (Go ‘Cats!). My wife and I are moving to San Antonio, where we will be in…
March 11, 2012 — daylight savings time starts and it’s time to revisit this post from August 2011… and to set the date and time on my stupid microwave. I’ve heard it as a good data collection rule of thumb…
As I blogged about on Friday, I was back at my alma mater, Northwestern, for a football game this weekend– well, actually, I was at Wrigley Field instead of our usual home stadium. The “confines” of “The Friendly Confines” (as…
Mark’s note: Today’s vacation guest post is from D. Mark Jackson, a lawyer who has been studying and embracing Lean principles in a California law firm. He normally writes in his very interesting Lean Law blog and I’ve been following…
As I’m sort of watching the Orange Bowl (it’s really just on in the background), a funny ad caught my eye. A guy comes into a [copy shop] and asks for color copies of a stack of documents. The employee…
Let me try to lighten the mood after my earlier outrage over the medical mistake in L.A. (there are updates, though, see below). I don’t like to leave a negative post on top of the blog as we go into…
How many trees did your iPhone bill kill? – USATODAY.com As with my petty hotel complaints, here’s another example of a company doing “too much” (the waste of overprocessing). This time it’s AT&T (I’m sorry, they like to be the…
I’ll try to lighten things back up a bit. I may have written about this before, but as a frequently traveling consultant, the hotel room is my “gemba” many evenings, so it’s hard not to find waste. I actually gave…
Here’s a light hearted topic for Lean Thinkers. “Overprocessing” is one of the 8 Types of Waste that we talk about in a Lean context (it comes from Toyota and Taiichi Ohno). One way of describing overprocessing is that it…
A Novel Plan Helps Hospital Wean Itself Off Pricey Tests – WSJ.com Kevin, over at Evolving Excellence, raised a similar issue about misaligned incentives and misleading metrics in healthcare (thanks for the mention, Kevin). This article, linked above, from the…
