Dr. Robert Wachter has a great column in today’s USA Today: “Column: Gregory House M.D.: RIP” and it’s republished on his blog, with its own comment section. I wrote a comment, which is awaiting moderation, and I’ll repost it here….…
It’s always great to see stories in the major media outlets about engaging front-line staff in improvement ideas. Recently, we had a piece in USA Today that I blogged about and now we have one in the Wall St. Journal…
I saw this article last week in the USA Today while traveling, with the online headline “Products nipped, tucked to save.” That headline makes me think first of old fashioned cost cutting – which in these economic times often means…
It’s time for a Lean Blog feature I haven’t done in a while…. “A Lean Guy Reads _______”. I’ve done this before with the WSJ, Fortune, and USA Today (click here for past editions). This time, it’s Tuesday’s USA Today…
Last month, in the midst of Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda’s appearance in front of Congress, there was a little sidebar in the USA Today that caught my eye (“Toyoda vs. Toyota“). An oft-repeated (including here in my blog) story in…
Hospital CEOs manage staff time, inventory to cut costs – USATODAY.com It’s nice to see a major publication covering Lean and, especially, Lean in healthcare. This time, it was USA Today who, again, did a better job than the WSJ…
Toyota Posts Big Loss, Signals More to Come – WSJ.com I saw this article on Saturday and it reminded me to go ahead and blog about a few other articles I’ve seen about Japanese CEOs lately. The big news about…
In Japan, more CEOs share the pain of tough times – USATODAY.com The USA Today, whether they’re trying or not, is doing a good job recently of highlighting issues at least somewhat related to Toyota and the Deming philosophy. While…
A USA Today article offered a small but telling example of how Toyota applies root cause problem solving and kaizen in everyday work. Even in times of financial pressure–or when business is going well–this kind of employee-driven improvement shows what…
TL;DR: Ford wants to learn from Toyota without blindly copying–but Lean isn’t just about continuous improvement and efficiency. Without a deep commitment to respect for people and long-term thinking, copying Toyota’s tools won’t deliver Toyota’s results. Ford CEO Mulally shares…
Following up on these two earlier posts (here and here)… I’ll quit calling them the “Idiot Corporation of America” since the Peanut Corporation of America is bankrupt and shutting down. I feel bad for those who are losing jobs due…
Report: Toyota considers cutting 1,000 jobs – USATODAY.com With the down economy, there had been much discussion about whether Toyota could continue it’s “no layoffs (of permanent employees)” streak going. That may end soon, sadly: Toyota is considering cutting more…
