I’d like to welcome a new sponsor to my blog, LeanPosters.com. You’ll find their ad in the right hand column… As is the case with many of my sponsors, LeanPosters.com is a small business, so I like helping entepreneurial ventures…
Following up the DirecTV service call that I blogged about this morning, there was some clear, obvious waste that could have been avoided through better training. It makes you wonder how many billions of dollars are wasted across the country…
Hat tip to Helen Z. for finding this full-page print ad in the New York Times. The full ad appears below in this post, but the primary element of the ad is what you see at left – it says…
Mark’s note: The vacation guest posts continue with a piece by a long-time friend of my blog, Matt Wrye. He’s a frequent commenter and wrote a post last year called “Clear and Relevant Metrics.” He recently started his own blog…
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…
I recently heard this on a cable news channel that was blaring in the airport: “The current passport processing time is 3 to 6 weeks”. Well, that’s not right from a Lean perspective. In this post, I’ll talk about breaking…
I’m a bit hesitant to blog about a bad experience with a doctor’s office and waiting time. There are multiple “draft” posts I’ve started to write, left saved out there without being published, as it seems a bit like a…
The final keynote talk at the recent Society for Health Systems / ASQ Healthcare conference was given by Dr. Barry Silbaugh, a former hospital executive and the current CEO of the ACPE – The American College of Physician Executives. Silbaugh…
TL;DR: An NPR story about workplace “efficiency” illustrates L.A.M.E.–Lean As Misguidedly Executed–where tools like 5S are applied without respect for people or employee engagement. True Lean builds capability with the people doing the work, not through top-down cost cutting. Oh…
Note from 2026: I first published this in 2010. The idea that Lean is loving care came from clinicians at St. Elisabeth Hospital in Tilburg, the Netherlands, and it has held up better than most of what I wrote that…
Saturday’s Wall Street Journal had an article (“11 Minutes of Action“) with analysis that said something my wife noticed a long time ago – there’s a lot of standing around during an NFL football game (or any football game, for…
‘It’s all about process’: Saint Mary’s Steve Palmreuter targets waste Here is an article that might serve as an inspiration for those of you who are looking to make a career transition from manufacturing to healthcare. The linked news article…
