Toyota is often cited as the inspiration for Lean, but its success is rooted in leadership behaviors, management systems, and a deep commitment to learning—not tools or slogans. This archive brings together blog posts, podcasts, and reflections on Toyota’s approach to quality, continuous improvement, psychological safety, and respect for people. Many of these posts explore what leaders outside Toyota often misunderstand—and what truly matters if they hope to learn from Toyota rather than copy it.
If you follow the auto industry, you might have seen headlines this week about how Toyota is being forced to shut down production in its Japanese factories next week (see one article, via Bloomberg). If you’re a devotee of the Toyota Production…
I get asked a lot, “How do you know if a hospital is truly ‘Lean?'” Nobody is ever perfect or “fully Lean,” but you could ask, “How do you know if somebody is on a legitimate Lean transformation journey?” If you could only ask one question...
Later today and tomorrow, I’ll be attending the annual World Patient Safety, Science & Technology Summit that’s produced by a non-profit called the Patient Safety Movement. If you’re also at the event, please say hi! Follow the event on the…
In the midst of the discussion about the NEJM article, John Shook of LEI (a former Toyota employee) pointed me to this 1993 HBR article: "Time-and-Motion Regained" I believe it's freely available...
Yesterday, I wrote Part 1 of this post on the Cleveland Clinic Improvement Model. Part 1 covered the left hand half of the model, with Organizational Alignment and Visual Management being the key themes. Once you have alignment, measures, and…
In the article posted today, Pamela Hartzband, M.D., and Jerome Groopman, M.D. (the later the author of the popular book How Doctors Think), rant about all sorts of things… some of which have nothing to do with Lean...
Humility is an important part of the Lean management philosophy... it also means being willing to admit that there is a problem. Humility means "we don't really know so we must understand and then try many things to see if we have the right solution."
Today, I'm announcing a new podcast series called the Toyota Kata Podcast, or "KataCast" for short. As the Toyota Kata book and methodology have become more popular, I've been surprised that I haven't been asked "why don't you blog more about Toyota Kata?" [...]
Mark's note: Today's guest post is a return visit by Gert Linthout, from Belgium. Gert and I were part of the same Lean healthcare study trip to Japan back in 2012... Once upon a time... It was some years ago, when we guided a Lean transformation project in a regional hospital. The ambition was to drastically improve...
Lean is, of course, not about a better way to build cars. It's a transferrable philosophy, management system, and methodology that is being applied in many different settings and industries, including healthcare. I'm often told (sometimes by somebody who is being sort of huffy): "Patients are not cars." [...]
Lean healthcare really is a global movement. Last year, when I went to Japan, we had people in the group from all across Asia, Denmark, Canada, the U.S., and Saudi Arabia. Health systems all around the world need to improve…
I’m going to be attending the Lean Startup Conference in San Francisco next month, as a “faculty member,” a moderator for a session, TBD, and maybe serving as a mentor. The organizers asked me to write a post introducing myself…