Unfortunately, healthcare professionals often aren’t given the tools they need to do their jobs properly. People are forced into workarounds and corner cutting, or they are forced into wasting time by running around to find equipment — or working equipment.…
I’ve recently had an email exchange with a retiree who is volunteering in a non-profit hospice care facility. I’m sharing this thoughts with his permission. It sounds like there’s often nothing for the volunteers to do and the leaders aren’t…
After last week’s piece on “putting the continuous back into continuous improvement,” I had another article published this past week. This new article was published in the publication “Hospitals & Health Networks,” co-authored with Rob Harding, and it’s called “Cut…
Last week, I posted a podcast with Mike George, founder of Strong America Now, an organization that is promoting Lean and Six Sigma methods to our political leaders and government. Much of the discussion, maybe unfortunately, was focused on Mr.…
Come back Thursday, July 21 for my new Podcast with former U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, where we talk about his work to improve patient safety in healthcare (see an earlier blog post here as a preview). I wish I…
Podcaster Cali Lewis (a fellow DFW-area Texan) hosts a show called GeekBeat.tv, where she normally highlights new consumer tech gadgets and nerdy robots from MIT. Her most recent video features video from her visit to Boeing and their 737 assembly…
As I’m going through revisions of my book, Lean Hospitals, a theme jumps out at me in Chapter 2…. it’s all about trust. The first excerpt says: Gary Convis, a retired Toyota senior vice president who had been one of…
Toyota has produced a series of videos that show how their innovations, technology and otherwise, have benefitted people outside of automobiles. One video that caught my eye was their 80-second video about the use of Lean and the Toyota Production…
Following up on yesterday’s found parody of the show The Office… As if we needed any proof that Dwight K. Schrute is NOT a “Lean Thinker,” check out this short video clip I saw the other night:
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…
Hospitals are full of workarounds and fire fighting, it’s a pretty common problem. That’s one reason cost is so high and quality is often so poor. One of the key insights that comes from introducing healthcare professionals to Lean concepts,…
Last week, I gave the keynote talk at a hospital’s twice-yearly lean conference for leaders and staff. As part of the seasonal decorations around the room, they had large ghost cutouts, each labeled with one of the “8 types of…
