Quality doesn’t come from inspection, pressure, or choosing between speed and accuracy. It comes from well-designed systems, capable processes, and leaders who focus on learning instead of blame. This archive brings together blog posts, podcasts, and reflections on quality through a Lean and Deming lens—covering psychological safety, metrics, variation, leadership behavior, healthcare quality, and why sustainable improvement depends on fixing systems rather than managing people harder.
I recently recorded an upcoming episode of the Lean Blog Interviews podcast with Dr. Peter Pronovost, the Chief Quality and Clinical Transformation Officer at University Hospitals (UH) in Cleveland. Most people know him because of the ICU checklist that cut…
In July 2013, on a test drive in the United States, Martin Winterkorn, the CEO of Volkswagen, noticed a paint imperfection on a Beetle. The paint was slightly thicker than the company standard. Less than a millimeter too thick, according…
At Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh, a nurse named Candice Bena decided a 76-year-old patient needed a new intravenous line. Radiology couldn’t install it right away. She was worried about infection, so she called Richard Shannon, who was chairman of…
When I was a young engineer at GM’s Livonia Engine Plant in the mid-1990s, I wrote down some of the things production workers said to me. One of them stuck, a worker in a machining department: “I want to stop…
For years, I’ve been asking a very specific question about Lean history: Where was Toyota’s first andon cord? Jeff Liker didn’t know. Neither did Isao Yoshino. I’ve asked other former Toyota people. Toyota histories and books about the development of…
102 seconds versus 300 seconds. That’s the comparison the 1992 booklet uses to make the case for one-piece flow. Three employees on an assembly line. Three processing steps. Same work, same number of people, same total processing time. The only…
Why do so many quality programs fall apart the moment the firefighter walks out the door? In this conversation, Chad Diggs talks about his new book, Below the Surface, and what it takes to build quality systems that outlast the people who…
A food company had a flowchart any auditor would love. Every step mapped. Every step mapped. Every critical control point identified. The HACCP plan (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points, the standard food safety framework that identifies where contamination can…
A Florida surgeon, Thomas Shaknovsky, was indicted on a second-degree manslaughter charge on April 13. The charge followed the death of William Bryan, a 70-year-old Alabama man, during what was supposed to be a laparoscopic splenectomy in August 2024. Instead…
Tesla builds cars in what used to be the NUMMI factory, a joint venture between Toyota and GM (which meant it was run as a Toyota plant with "Lean" practices). Before that, it was a dysfunctional GM plant. Now that it's a Tesla plant, did they learn from Toyota or does it seem more like "the old GM?"
TL;DR: A sound check, live song requests, and a naming regret — what watching Brandi Carlile perform taught me about specific problem-solving, vulnerability, and continuous improvement. My wife and I got to see the amazing Brandi Carlile perform near Chicago…
This week’s Operational Excellence Mixtape tackles the challenge of sustaining improvement amidst turbulence and change fatigue. We explore why values must act as your “North Star” when markets shift, methods for building quality systems that fight entropy (with examples from…
