Lean Blog Audio

My first trip to China... http://leanblog.org/audio151

http://leanblog.org/audio150 Thanks to those of you who pre-ordered the 3rd edition of my book Lean Hospitals.Click below to read a free preview from the book, the start of the chapter on leading and engaging employees (arguably, it's all about leadership). Improving the Way We Manage [Preview of "Lean Hospitals" 3rd Ed.] And if you post a comment sharing some of your reflections on your Lean journey, you might receive a free copy of the the book. Also, you still have a chance for me to send your CEO a free copy.

For decades, manufacturers have been tripped up by the simplistic idea that Lean is about "zero inventories." It probably didn't help that one of the earliest and most prominent books about what many used to call "Japanese manufacturing practices" had that exact title: Zero Inventories. It was published in 1983, well before "Lean" was a term used for this.Not even Toyota has zero inventories. They don't have zero raw materials. They have non-zero buffer inventories in between parts of their assembly lines. And it's not hard to see INVENTORY of unsold cars at Toyota dealers (realizing those are independent businesses and the inventory's not on Toyota's book, but still...)

Thanks to this post by Bruce Hamilton (aka "Toast Guy" or "Old Lean Dude"), I was reminded of the old General Motors effort, spearheaded by then-CEO Roger Smith (of "Roger&Me" fame), to fully automate car factories. Their concept was the "lights-out factory" that could run without people (other than a security guard).GM invested $90 BILLION dollars over 10 years in this quixotic (if not foolhardy) quest. The robots often famously painted each other instead of painting cars, as described in this book: http://leanblog.org/audio148

The 1994 book Why TQM Fails And What to Do About It is a book that could be very relevant today, in the context of Lean. I'll give credit to Greg Jacobson, MD from KaiNexus who had a copy of this book on his shelf. I bought a copy and have recently been reading it because I was curious to see if there parallels to be found with Lean failures. http://leanblog.org/audio147

http://leanblog.org/audio146 Earlier this year, we had rantings from two doctors about Lean in the esteemed New England Journal of Medicine... except what they described didn't really sound like Lean (as I wrote about here and here - and also see Dr. John Toussaint's rebuttal).Now, there's a story written by an emergency medicine physician, Dr. Brad Cotton, that appears in a publication called "Emergency Medicine News" -- FIRST PERSON: 'We Fired Our Hospital' What appears on the front page of their publication in the June 2016 edition isn't news -- it's a first-hand story and an opinion piece. This is the "most trusted" name in "news" for emergency medicine professionals? Good grief.

Ah, whiskey. I like whiskey. I'm not afraid to say that. I've blogged about whiskey (or whisky) once before: Why Kaizen is an Important Differentiator for Japanese Whisky. I also have a personal Kaizen story that I need to write about from my day volunteering at a Texas bourbon distillery.On a recent flight, I was reminded of the need to follow standardized work, even in the context of something as simple as ordering a drink. A passenger seated across from me (yes, it was another passenger, not me), responded to the flight attendant asking him if he wanted a drink.

Previously on LinkedIn, I’ve written about Kaizen in a wine bar and the need for restaurants to not blame employees for problems. Yesterday, I published my 50th post for their Influencers program: This Restaurant Server Sadly Explains a Widespread Management Problem… I hope it’s thought provoking about your own workplace.

http://leanblog.org/audio143 I've written before about the subject of hospitals "flexing" nurses and employees. I've criticized flexing (or the practice of sending employees home early because patient census is low) and I've pointed out that it's not keeping with "Lean" principles to "save money" by sending people home early.See these posts: Is This The One Question That Determines If You're Truly a Lean-Thinking Hospital? "The Emperor's Sacred Cow's New Clothes - "Flexing" Hospital Staff" Where Do Hospitals Get the Idea that Lean is Only About Cost Reduction?

http://leanblog.org/audio142 You might remember the hubbub (and my earlier blog post) about this article that somehow appeared in the NEJM: "Medical Taylorism."It's sad and frustrating that people so often talk past each other in these different "debates" about Lean. Drs. Groopman and Hartzband seem unwilling to learn about Lean and TPS. They have just now doubled down on their assertion that Lean equals Taylorism and that it's not appropriate for healthcare. Sigh. The NEJM just published two letters to the editor.