Lean Blog Audio

Blog post: https://www.leanblog.org/audio318 The Wall Street Journal has an epic track record when it comes to always getting it wrong when they write about Lean or the Toyota Production System. They always focus on just the “just in time” pillar, ignoring “jidoka” (built in quality) as the other pillar (per Toyota). They ignore many other aspects of TPS, like the culture and the management style. See some of that track record, including recent pandemic supply chain articles. You're normally better off reading about Lean from the source. But, they did better in this recent article about General Electric and CEO Larry Culp (who knows Lean very well from his time as CEO of Danaher): Larry Culp Rewired GE. Then He Unwound It.

Blog post: https://www.leanblog.org/audio317 Oh, how I enjoyed this article a month ago when it was sent to me. It's from 2003, but it was new to me: Why dolphins are deep thinkers

Blog post: https://www.leanblog.org/audio316 I received a question from a healthcare leader who had read about the “idea card” format and method that Joe Swartz and I shared in our Healthcare Kaizen books. I read your post about the Idea Card. Amazing! Have a follow up question. What does Kaizen suggest about how to incentivize people to submit ideas? She's asking about the “Kaizen” style and approach to continuous improvement. I'll share some of my reply along with some relevant excerpts from the book.

Blog post: https://www.leanblog.org/audio315 I'm really excited to be hosting and moderating this webinar next week, the second in our new Value Capture Webinar series. The title is "Applications of Lean Leadership Methods in Home-Based Care."

Blog post: https://www.leanblog.org/audio314 In this era of Covid--19 vaccination, I'm still pretty much sidelined and not on site with any clients, although I did get to visit two mass vaccination sites (in addition to the one that vaccinated me). I have tried really hard to be a cheerleader for continuous improvement and, in particular, for sharing continuous improvement ideas through the free VacciNexus platform and through other channels. I believe, of course, in the power of many, many small improvements being driven by front line staff and their managers. That's the focus of my Healthcare Kaizen books. I also realize there's a time and a place for process re-design and for being innovative (thinking of it as step-change improvement. In this post, I share and discuss improvements large and small.

https://www.leanblog.org/audio313 tl;dr summary: Lean isn't just efficiency... it's safety, quality, delivery, cost, and morale. People often misunderstand that -- they don't know or they were taught the wrong things I often have the opportunity to teach a group of experienced healthcare professionals, from a wide range of disciplines, about Lean. My session is part of a longer professional development program that's framed as "clinical outcomes and patient safety." Lean has a lot to contribute to those outcomes, and you can see a collection of results here or here. Since my last session had to be virtual, due to the pandemic, I took advantage of the opportunity to use some interactive tools from Mentimeter.com. This is something I'll continue doing even when I have the chance to teach in person, as people can vote or give input from their phones, anonymously, while sitting in class. One question I asked the group was: What does "Lean" mean to you in terms of improvement?

https://www.leanblog.org/audio312 In this post, I'm going to share some reflections from one of my workplaces, some things that occurred last week. I'm going to be vague, so forgive me for that. It feels right to be less specific in this case, or at least that's the cautious (and maybe respectful) thing to do. When wearing one of my different "hats" with one of the organizations I work with, something went wrong. It wasn't something I did (or I would own up to that in specific ways). But the mistake affected me and the work I was doing. When a preventable process problem occurs, the engineer in me finds it relatively easy to be logical and think through "what happened?" instead of "who messed up?" A few deep calming breaths help, as well.

http://www.leanblog.org/audio311 I'm not a Buffalo Bills fan (a.k.a. "The Bills Mafia"), but I did attend one game at what was then called Rich Stadium in 1998 when I was a grad school intern at Kodak. Even without being a fan, I wish I could have written a headline for this post that said "Buffalo Bills Kaizen Their Way to a Super Bowl." Readers of this blog, of course, know that "Kaizen" is a Japanese word meaning "good change" and it's framed as an approach to engaging everybody in small improvements to the way they do their work. So what does this have to do with football? Football is a workplace, even if it's college. I blogged about my alma mater, Northwestern University, using the word "Kaizen" (and the mindset) within their football program. This article about the Bills isn't new, but I recently discovered it on Twitter: Sean McDermott, Bills use 'Kaizen' strategy to stress constant improvement From the article...

https://www.leanblog.org/audio310 During this "let's try to get people vaccinated" phase of the Covid-19 pandemic, almost every article that I've seen about the vaccine and its distribution mentions the need to not waste precious doses. There are many opportunities for error with the different vaccines. If some of them aren't stored properly at the correct temperature, the vaccine degrades and gets wasted (or worse, gets injected and gives a false promise of effectiveness). Good process design (lessons I learned as an engineer) means being proactive and thinking about what could go wrong -- and then designing the process in a way that prevents errors or mistakes. The ideal would be "error proofing" that makes it impossible to make a mistake. Or, we could make it more apparent that a mistake has been made (for example, a temperature-sensitive label on a vaccine bottle that would let you know if it's been out of the correct storage temperature too long). A countermeasure like this might prevent the mistake of using expired vaccine. But how can we prevent the storage problem (and the waste of the vaccine) to begin with? I wasn't planning on blogging over the holidays, but this article caught my attention: Wisconsin hospital tosses 500 doses of COVID-19 vaccine due to 'human error' (See the full post at the link https://www.leanblog.org/audio310)

https://www.leanblog.org/audio309  Subscribe now to "My Favorite Mistake"