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  1. <?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?><?xml-stylesheet href="http://www.blogger.com/styles/atom.css" type="text/css"?><feed xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom' xmlns:openSearch='http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearchrss/1.0/' xmlns:blogger='http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008' xmlns:georss='http://www.georss.org/georss' xmlns:gd="http://schemas.google.com/g/2005" xmlns:thr='http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0'><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7108456</id><updated>2024-03-07T15:09:14.684-05:00</updated><category term="Healthcare"/><category term="Toyota"/><category term="books"/><category term="WSJ"/><category term="Flinchbaugh"/><category term="Deming"/><category term="Respect for People"/><category term="Podcast"/><category term="Leadership"/><category term="GM"/><category term="Standard Work"/><category term="Patient Safety"/><category term="Quality"/><category term="Ford"/><category term="Kaizen"/><category term="Factory Examples"/><category term="Error Proofing"/><category term="Everyday Lean"/><category term="Doctor"/><category term="China"/><category term="Video"/><category term="Aviation"/><category term="Blog Admin"/><category term="Womack"/><category term="5S"/><category term="Waste"/><category term="Bodek"/><category term="Government"/><category term="NYTimes"/><category term="Blame"/><category term="Lean Hospitals"/><category term="ThedaCare"/><category term="Sports"/><category term="Layoffs"/><category term="Software"/><category term="LAME"/><category term="Canada"/><category term="Travel"/><category term="Problem Solving"/><category term="Careers"/><category term="Dell"/><category term="Gemba"/><category term="Green"/><category term="Nursing"/><category term="Profit = Price - 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All content has been moved. Please use google or the leanblog.org search box if you want to find that content for reading, linking, etc.</subtitle><link rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#feed' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://kanban.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7108456/posts/default?alt=atom&amp;redirect=false'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://kanban.blogspot.com/'/><link rel='next' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7108456/posts/default?alt=atom&amp;start-index=26&amp;max-results=25&amp;redirect=false'/><author><name>Mark Graban</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/07953086531083611251</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='32' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBC2ewG5wv4khS_3UfhWPWJTxC8VjhzB-LzQ-hycIa9s7qg_LDUSinCqiS0sVKd1h3ByprNuKFeZWuxPbygutJOAcLTA8xs8QwvanwqxKvzHygpTqQhezljZo9VOi-uWU/s220/twitter3.png'/></author><generator version='7.00' uri='http://www.blogger.com'>Blogger</generator><openSearch:totalResults>2899</openSearch:totalResults><openSearch:startIndex>1</openSearch:startIndex><openSearch:itemsPerPage>25</openSearch:itemsPerPage><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7108456.post-8369626015285984473</id><published>2009-12-25T17:48:00.002-05:00</published><updated>2018-01-20T10:50:18.402-05:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Blog Admin"/><title type='text'>Message to Blogger &quot;Followers&quot;</title><content type='html'>Hi - I will no longer be updating my blog via the blogger system. 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  15. If you are reading this material on a website other than leanblog.org, planetlean.org, amazon.com, or a BlogBurst partner, the web site is possibly infringing on the author&#39;s copyright.&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://kanban.blogspot.com/feeds/8369626015285984473/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=7108456&amp;postID=8369626015285984473&amp;isPopup=true' title='0 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7108456/posts/default/8369626015285984473'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7108456/posts/default/8369626015285984473'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://kanban.blogspot.com/2009/12/message-to-blogger-followers.html' title='Message to Blogger &quot;Followers&quot;'/><author><name>Mark Graban</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/07953086531083611251</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='32' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBC2ewG5wv4khS_3UfhWPWJTxC8VjhzB-LzQ-hycIa9s7qg_LDUSinCqiS0sVKd1h3ByprNuKFeZWuxPbygutJOAcLTA8xs8QwvanwqxKvzHygpTqQhezljZo9VOi-uWU/s220/twitter3.png'/></author><thr:total>0</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7108456.post-3049037406051269912</id><published>2009-12-15T07:11:00.002-05:00</published><updated>2018-01-20T10:50:49.539-05:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Blog Admin"/><title type='text'>New Site Design Up at leanblog.org</title><content type='html'>Hi, update on the transition to my new WordPress site and redesign.&lt;br /&gt;
  16. Please take a look at the new site on the web, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.blogger.com/www.leanblog.org&quot;&gt;www.leanblog.org&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;
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If you are reading this material on a website other than leanblog.org, planetlean.org, amazon.com, or a BlogBurst partner, the web site is possibly infringing on the author&#39;s copyright.&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://kanban.blogspot.com/feeds/3049037406051269912/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=7108456&amp;postID=3049037406051269912&amp;isPopup=true' title='0 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7108456/posts/default/3049037406051269912'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7108456/posts/default/3049037406051269912'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://kanban.blogspot.com/2009/12/new-site-design-up-rss-not-updating-yet.html' title='New Site Design Up at leanblog.org'/><author><name>Mark Graban</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/07953086531083611251</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='32' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBC2ewG5wv4khS_3UfhWPWJTxC8VjhzB-LzQ-hycIa9s7qg_LDUSinCqiS0sVKd1h3ByprNuKFeZWuxPbygutJOAcLTA8xs8QwvanwqxKvzHygpTqQhezljZo9VOi-uWU/s220/twitter3.png'/></author><thr:total>0</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7108456.post-6661319921472487372</id><published>2009-12-14T04:00:00.001-05:00</published><updated>2009-12-14T06:18:30.059-05:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Ankit_Patel"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Respect for People"/><title type='text'>Guest Post : It&#39;s About People</title><content type='html'>&lt;span style=&quot;font-style: italic;&quot;&gt;Today&#39;s guest post is from Ankit Patel, who &lt;/span&gt;&lt;a style=&quot;font-style: italic;&quot; href=&quot;http://theleanwayconsulting.blogspot.com/&quot;&gt;started his own blog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-style: italic;&quot;&gt; and has been active &lt;/span&gt;&lt;a style=&quot;font-style: italic;&quot; href=&quot;http://twitter.com/ankittheleanway&quot;&gt;on Twitter&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-style: italic;&quot;&gt;. Welcome to the Lean blogosphere, Ankit.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;font-weight: bold;&quot;&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size:130%;&quot;&gt;It’s About People, by Ankit Patel:&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;Like many of you I first learned lean on the job in a manufacturing setting. Some of us have applied to areas outside manufacturing with pretty good success but there are things where it just seems like it&#39;s not sticking with the people.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So how do you convey the message to your audience? What I&#39;ve seen work pretty well is using the DISC system to communicate to people why it&#39;s so important to make changes. Just a quick review below is the DISC personality system. Typically people fall into 1 maybe 2 categories as their dominant traits.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;font-weight: bold;&quot;&gt;&lt;a onblur=&quot;try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}&quot; href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjX06qzfuR6VRjgw96EgLDuOqSs4Ag_S_vose0faZ3tEhfyKxBf92Wq7rRWeY4brHqoFuH54etal5c63LGjvzoiEYxYPHR3ErVBERqS9hQQUXPgI4Q6GsQbg0o0zQ3ZOIHJ00Sa/s1600-h/DISC.jpg&quot;&gt;&lt;img style=&quot;margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 384px; height: 482px;&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjX06qzfuR6VRjgw96EgLDuOqSs4Ag_S_vose0faZ3tEhfyKxBf92Wq7rRWeY4brHqoFuH54etal5c63LGjvzoiEYxYPHR3ErVBERqS9hQQUXPgI4Q6GsQbg0o0zQ3ZOIHJ00Sa/s400/DISC.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; id=&quot;BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5414901778614425250&quot; border=&quot;0&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;First off how do you know what category someone falls into? I&#39;ve used it enough to where you get a feel for someone after about 5-15 minutes of talking with them but you can always find free tests online.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a onblur=&quot;try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}&quot; href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAGdq2Uy2qMR21rYgPqYmLnrdc_s4RY2dpDQZovrmCom2VolNZon6WkDFegX9qZy83eC4yW42OehXrZDW8wVGcU_FEOhzhFTeDO5ryNr8ETUeMkDbfAPD-omgfc1tBpO2wSQ6S/s1600-h/DISCmodelrdedsquare.png&quot;&gt;&lt;img style=&quot;margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 146px; height: 146px;&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAGdq2Uy2qMR21rYgPqYmLnrdc_s4RY2dpDQZovrmCom2VolNZon6WkDFegX9qZy83eC4yW42OehXrZDW8wVGcU_FEOhzhFTeDO5ryNr8ETUeMkDbfAPD-omgfc1tBpO2wSQ6S/s200/DISCmodelrdedsquare.png&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; id=&quot;BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5414902226493481442&quot; border=&quot;0&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;I was once trying to convince a call center in a company that they needed to reduce waste using lean principles. Good news was that lean was being done at the company and there had been some great successes. Bad news was that it had the stigma of being just a &quot;manufacturing thing.&quot; The very first thing I did coming into the call center was to be very direct and very task oriented. I assumed that most were D&#39;s and S&#39;s because in the manufacturing setting that&#39;s usually the people you get.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Without getting into too many details let’s just say it was like pushing a wet noodle on a sticky floor. I decided to step back and review what was going on and saw that my communication style was way off for my audience. Can you guess what profiles dominated my audience? Yup I&#39;s and S&#39;s and some C&#39;s with very few D&#39;s.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;What I found that worked best with the people in the call center was to tell them stories about lean and how it helped. I told them about how we had people running themselves ragged fire constantly fighting issues.  When we implemented standard work those same folks felt like &quot;the 3000 lb ball they were carrying was lifted off their shoulders.&quot; I told how the team members were happier after lean because they felt like they had a stake in what was being done. I would even bring in some of the manufacturing folks and have them do a testimonial.  We had an office worker, a line worker, and a manager but the people were all the I and S profile. Because unlike magnets, with people like attracts like.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Once the initial hump was tackled then we could get down to business with the details, but if it hadn&#39;t been for the shift in communication style we wouldn&#39;t have been able to help the call center as quickly as we did. I&#39;d love to hear some of your stories on how you&#39;ve used different communication styles with different personality types.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;center&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size:85%;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://feeds.feedburner.com/LeanBlog/&quot;&gt;Subscribe via RSS&lt;/a&gt;  | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanblog.org/&quot;&gt;Lean Blog Main Page&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanpodcast.org/&quot;&gt;Podcast&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.twitter.com/leanblog&quot;&gt;Twitter @leanblog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;blogger-post-footer&quot;&gt;Please check out my main blog page at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanblog.org/&quot;&gt;www.leanblog.org&lt;/a&gt;
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  28. The RSS feed content you are reading is copyrighted by the author, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.markgraban.com/&quot;&gt;Mark Graban&lt;/a&gt;.
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  30. If you are reading this material on a website other than leanblog.org, planetlean.org, amazon.com, or a BlogBurst partner, the web site is possibly infringing on the author&#39;s copyright.&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://kanban.blogspot.com/feeds/6661319921472487372/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=7108456&amp;postID=6661319921472487372&amp;isPopup=true' title='4 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7108456/posts/default/6661319921472487372'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7108456/posts/default/6661319921472487372'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://kanban.blogspot.com/2009/12/guest-post-its-about-people.html' title='Guest Post : It&#39;s About People'/><author><name>Mark Graban</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/07953086531083611251</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='32' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBC2ewG5wv4khS_3UfhWPWJTxC8VjhzB-LzQ-hycIa9s7qg_LDUSinCqiS0sVKd1h3ByprNuKFeZWuxPbygutJOAcLTA8xs8QwvanwqxKvzHygpTqQhezljZo9VOi-uWU/s220/twitter3.png'/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjX06qzfuR6VRjgw96EgLDuOqSs4Ag_S_vose0faZ3tEhfyKxBf92Wq7rRWeY4brHqoFuH54etal5c63LGjvzoiEYxYPHR3ErVBERqS9hQQUXPgI4Q6GsQbg0o0zQ3ZOIHJ00Sa/s72-c/DISC.jpg" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>4</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7108456.post-3913364299566629948</id><published>2009-12-13T20:16:00.002-05:00</published><updated>2009-12-13T20:23:20.744-05:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="UPS"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Video"/><title type='text'>Funny UPS Ad Parodies from SNL</title><content type='html'>&lt;p&gt;Some weekend fun... &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;You might remember my complaints about the UPS TV ads with the long-haired guy at the whiteboard:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanblog.org/2007/02/what-can-brown-do-they-dumb-it-down-for.html&quot;&gt;What Can Brown Do? They Dumb It Down For Us&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanblog.org/2006/03/this-ups-ad-bugs-me.html&quot;&gt;This UPS Ad Bugs Me &lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;Saturday Night Live had two funny video parodies last week, for your enjoyment:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Ad 1:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;object height=&quot;266&quot; width=&quot;400&quot;&gt;&lt;param name=&quot;movie&quot; value=&quot;http://www.hulu.com/embed/tJqgVEtE97XFCaryvVTacA&quot;&gt;&lt;param name=&quot;allowFullScreen&quot; value=&quot;true&quot;&gt;&lt;embed src=&quot;http://www.hulu.com/embed/tJqgVEtE97XFCaryvVTacA&quot; type=&quot;application/x-shockwave-flash&quot; allowfullscreen=&quot;true&quot; height=&quot;266&quot; width=&quot;400&quot;&gt;&lt;/embed&gt;&lt;/object&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Ad 2 (not completely family-friendly, at the end):&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;object height=&quot;266&quot; width=&quot;400&quot;&gt;&lt;param name=&quot;movie&quot; value=&quot;http://www.hulu.com/embed/eXWxBNUE-BHYTT6wKtOpfA&quot;&gt;&lt;param name=&quot;allowFullScreen&quot; value=&quot;true&quot;&gt;&lt;embed src=&quot;http://www.hulu.com/embed/eXWxBNUE-BHYTT6wKtOpfA&quot; type=&quot;application/x-shockwave-flash&quot; allowfullscreen=&quot;true&quot; height=&quot;266&quot; width=&quot;400&quot;&gt;&lt;/embed&gt;&lt;/object&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;center&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size:85%;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://feeds.feedburner.com/LeanBlog/&quot;&gt;Subscribe via RSS&lt;/a&gt;  | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanblog.org/&quot;&gt;Lean Blog Main Page&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanpodcast.org/&quot;&gt;Podcast&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.twitter.com/leanblog&quot;&gt;Twitter @leanblog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;blogger-post-footer&quot;&gt;Please check out my main blog page at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanblog.org/&quot;&gt;www.leanblog.org&lt;/a&gt;
  31.  
  32. The RSS feed content you are reading is copyrighted by the author, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.markgraban.com/&quot;&gt;Mark Graban&lt;/a&gt;.
  33.  
  34. If you are reading this material on a website other than leanblog.org, planetlean.org, amazon.com, or a BlogBurst partner, the web site is possibly infringing on the author&#39;s copyright.&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://kanban.blogspot.com/feeds/3913364299566629948/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=7108456&amp;postID=3913364299566629948&amp;isPopup=true' title='0 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7108456/posts/default/3913364299566629948'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7108456/posts/default/3913364299566629948'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://kanban.blogspot.com/2009/12/funny-ups-ad-parodies-from-snl.html' title='Funny UPS Ad Parodies from SNL'/><author><name>Mark Graban</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/07953086531083611251</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='32' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBC2ewG5wv4khS_3UfhWPWJTxC8VjhzB-LzQ-hycIa9s7qg_LDUSinCqiS0sVKd1h3ByprNuKFeZWuxPbygutJOAcLTA8xs8QwvanwqxKvzHygpTqQhezljZo9VOi-uWU/s220/twitter3.png'/></author><thr:total>0</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7108456.post-1125437548351360147</id><published>2009-12-12T10:26:00.007-05:00</published><updated>2009-12-14T17:18:09.695-05:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Blog Admin"/><title type='text'>Blog Downtime Later for Crossover to WordPress</title><content type='html'>Hi, expect some downtime at some point today as we transition over to the new physical design and WordPress under the hood.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;p&gt;I&#39;ll post updates on &lt;a href=&quot;http://twitter.com/leanblog&quot;&gt;Twitter&lt;/a&gt;, follow the link in the footer of this post.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;And I mean this graphic from The Simpsons just as a joke, not an indication of any difficulty my tech partner is having.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a onblur=&quot;try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}&quot; href=&quot;http://www.mundosimpson.com.ar/imagenes/technical/3f04.jpg&quot;&gt;&lt;img style=&quot;margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;&quot; src=&quot;http://www.mundosimpson.com.ar/imagenes/technical/3f04.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; border=&quot;0&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;center&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size:85%;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://feeds.feedburner.com/LeanBlog/&quot;&gt;Subscribe via RSS&lt;/a&gt;  | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanblog.org/&quot;&gt;Lean Blog Main Page&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanpodcast.org/&quot;&gt;Podcast&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.twitter.com/leanblog&quot;&gt;Twitter @leanblog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;blogger-post-footer&quot;&gt;Please check out my main blog page at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanblog.org/&quot;&gt;www.leanblog.org&lt;/a&gt;
  35.  
  36. The RSS feed content you are reading is copyrighted by the author, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.markgraban.com/&quot;&gt;Mark Graban&lt;/a&gt;.
  37.  
  38. If you are reading this material on a website other than leanblog.org, planetlean.org, amazon.com, or a BlogBurst partner, the web site is possibly infringing on the author&#39;s copyright.&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://kanban.blogspot.com/feeds/1125437548351360147/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=7108456&amp;postID=1125437548351360147&amp;isPopup=true' title='1 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7108456/posts/default/1125437548351360147'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7108456/posts/default/1125437548351360147'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://kanban.blogspot.com/2009/12/blog-downtime-later-for-crossover-to.html' title='Blog Downtime Later for Crossover to WordPress'/><author><name>Mark Graban</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/07953086531083611251</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='32' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBC2ewG5wv4khS_3UfhWPWJTxC8VjhzB-LzQ-hycIa9s7qg_LDUSinCqiS0sVKd1h3ByprNuKFeZWuxPbygutJOAcLTA8xs8QwvanwqxKvzHygpTqQhezljZo9VOi-uWU/s220/twitter3.png'/></author><thr:total>1</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7108456.post-111231889512684191</id><published>2009-12-11T00:08:00.001-05:00</published><updated>2009-12-11T00:09:44.581-05:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Blog Admin"/><title type='text'>New Lean Blog Design This Weekend</title><content type='html'>&lt;div style=&quot;margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;The times, they are a changin&#39;. It has been about three years since I refreshed my blog, giving it a facelift from &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20051025235504/http://kanban.blogspot.com/&quot;&gt;the original design&lt;/a&gt; (or lack thereof) to basically what you see today (with &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20070806141216/http://www.leanblog.org/&quot;&gt;this old logo&lt;/a&gt; in between). This will be &quot;Lean Blog 3.0,&quot; if you will. I&#39;m trying to give some advance notice so regular readers aren&#39;t too disoriented with the visual change (heck, I&#39;ll be disoriented, I&#39;m sure).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Most likely this Saturday, you&#39;ll see a new design that&#39;s more than just cosmetic. A sneak preview of the new front page is below (click for a larger view). I know last week I said Saturday, but I think it&#39;s really happening this week (better to wait and make sure everything is right). More details (&quot;standardized work,&quot; if you will) will follow once the new site is active.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGqk5XzX83i7HNfQJiDLRPbGq-NErh7UG4yehwnJhNl6GqN4e18dx5D_Rxj7M6jO7GrJ6BszqedJRwHGkLAQ2ARtzsj20y9BBqoZgW7mYZrTHYX4CPlY10I2KhC-34lzbWwK6F/s1600/Screen+shot+2009-11-30+at+9.49.41+PM.jpg&quot;&gt;&lt;img style=&quot;width: 399px; height: 174px;&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGqk5XzX83i7HNfQJiDLRPbGq-NErh7UG4yehwnJhNl6GqN4e18dx5D_Rxj7M6jO7GrJ6BszqedJRwHGkLAQ2ARtzsj20y9BBqoZgW7mYZrTHYX4CPlY10I2KhC-34lzbWwK6F/s400/Screen+shot+2009-11-30+at+9.49.41+PM.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; border=&quot;0&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I know it&#39;s a big change. The last time I did a major overhaul, I know not everybody liked it. It will be jarring to see this page with a new look... so time to start communicating in the name of effective change management (or so I hope).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The major under-the-hood overhaul will be a move from the &quot;Blogger&quot; platform to &quot;WordPress.&quot; I could write more about this, but it might bore everyone but other bloggers.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&#39;ll post more details about how the use of the site will change. I think the adjustment will be relatively easy if you&#39;re used to other blogs that run on WordPress. The login in for comments will be a little different, but I&#39;ll share new &quot;standardized work&quot; about how to make that transition.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;All old posts and comments will be maintained with the new platform and all old links should still point to the same page.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;As always, your feedback is and will be important. There will be plenty of PDCA opportunities as we go, so I&#39;ll thank you in advance for your patience and feedback.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;center&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size:85%;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://feeds.feedburner.com/LeanBlog/&quot;&gt;Subscribe via RSS&lt;/a&gt;  | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanblog.org/&quot;&gt;Lean Blog Main Page&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanpodcast.org/&quot;&gt;Podcast&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.twitter.com/leanblog&quot;&gt;Twitter @leanblog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;clear: both; text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://picasa.google.com/blogger/&quot; target=&quot;ext&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://photos1.blogger.com/pbp.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Posted by Picasa&quot; style=&quot;border: 0px none ; padding: 0px; background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 50%; -moz-background-clip: border; -moz-background-origin: padding; -moz-background-inline-policy: continuous;&quot; align=&quot;middle&quot; border=&quot;0&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;blogger-post-footer&quot;&gt;Please check out my main blog page at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanblog.org/&quot;&gt;www.leanblog.org&lt;/a&gt;
  39.  
  40. The RSS feed content you are reading is copyrighted by the author, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.markgraban.com/&quot;&gt;Mark Graban&lt;/a&gt;.
  41.  
  42. If you are reading this material on a website other than leanblog.org, planetlean.org, amazon.com, or a BlogBurst partner, the web site is possibly infringing on the author&#39;s copyright.&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://kanban.blogspot.com/feeds/111231889512684191/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=7108456&amp;postID=111231889512684191&amp;isPopup=true' title='4 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7108456/posts/default/111231889512684191'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7108456/posts/default/111231889512684191'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://kanban.blogspot.com/2009/12/sneak-peak-new-leanblogorg-design.html' title='New Lean Blog Design This Weekend'/><author><name>Mark Graban</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/07953086531083611251</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='32' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBC2ewG5wv4khS_3UfhWPWJTxC8VjhzB-LzQ-hycIa9s7qg_LDUSinCqiS0sVKd1h3ByprNuKFeZWuxPbygutJOAcLTA8xs8QwvanwqxKvzHygpTqQhezljZo9VOi-uWU/s220/twitter3.png'/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGqk5XzX83i7HNfQJiDLRPbGq-NErh7UG4yehwnJhNl6GqN4e18dx5D_Rxj7M6jO7GrJ6BszqedJRwHGkLAQ2ARtzsj20y9BBqoZgW7mYZrTHYX4CPlY10I2KhC-34lzbWwK6F/s72-c/Screen+shot+2009-11-30+at+9.49.41+PM.jpg" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>4</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7108456.post-7440320832134722440</id><published>2009-12-10T04:01:00.000-05:00</published><updated>2009-12-10T04:01:01.746-05:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Healthcare"/><title type='text'>Coming Soon: Notes from Day 2 at IHI &#39;09 Forum</title><content type='html'>&lt;p&gt;Ah, travel delays. Late night getting back from Orlando, so I will type up notes over the weekend from Wednesday&#39;s talks at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement Forum.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt;Lean journey at Long Beach Memorial Hospital (listen to my &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanblog.org/2009/07/leanblog-podcast-70-tamra-kaplan-long.html&quot;&gt;previous Podcast with their COO, Tamra Kaplan&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Thoughts from &lt;a href=&quot;http://runningahospital.blogspot.com/&quot;&gt;Paul Levy&lt;/a&gt; on social media, leadership, and quality improvement&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Thoughts from a leading healthcare economist&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;For today&#39;s main post, please scroll down.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;center&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size:85%;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://feeds.feedburner.com/LeanBlog/&quot;&gt;Subscribe via RSS&lt;/a&gt;  | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanblog.org/&quot;&gt;Lean Blog Main Page&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanpodcast.org/&quot;&gt;Podcast&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.twitter.com/leanblog&quot;&gt;Twitter @leanblog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;blogger-post-footer&quot;&gt;Please check out my main blog page at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanblog.org/&quot;&gt;www.leanblog.org&lt;/a&gt;
  43.  
  44. The RSS feed content you are reading is copyrighted by the author, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.markgraban.com/&quot;&gt;Mark Graban&lt;/a&gt;.
  45.  
  46. If you are reading this material on a website other than leanblog.org, planetlean.org, amazon.com, or a BlogBurst partner, the web site is possibly infringing on the author&#39;s copyright.&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://kanban.blogspot.com/feeds/7440320832134722440/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=7108456&amp;postID=7440320832134722440&amp;isPopup=true' title='0 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7108456/posts/default/7440320832134722440'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7108456/posts/default/7440320832134722440'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://kanban.blogspot.com/2009/12/coming-soon-notes-from-day-2-at-ihi-09.html' title='Coming Soon: Notes from Day 2 at IHI &#39;09 Forum'/><author><name>Mark Graban</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/07953086531083611251</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='32' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBC2ewG5wv4khS_3UfhWPWJTxC8VjhzB-LzQ-hycIa9s7qg_LDUSinCqiS0sVKd1h3ByprNuKFeZWuxPbygutJOAcLTA8xs8QwvanwqxKvzHygpTqQhezljZo9VOi-uWU/s220/twitter3.png'/></author><thr:total>0</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7108456.post-2599326456888974255</id><published>2009-12-10T04:00:00.005-05:00</published><updated>2009-12-10T17:50:26.436-05:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Healthcare"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Kaizen"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Move"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Waste"/><title type='text'>A Lean Change Agent&#39;s Move to Healthcare in Michigan</title><content type='html'>&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mlive.com/business/west-michigan/index.ssf/2009/12/its_all_about_process_saint_ma.html&quot;&gt;‘It’s all about process’: Saint Mary’s Steve Palmreuter targets waste&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;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 features a former Herman Miller lean change agent who is now working for a hospital in western Michigan.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;And in a manufacturing state such as Michigan, there exists a vast talent pool for hospitals to tap to learn how to squeeze waste and inefficiency out of every aspect of an enterprise.&lt;/blockquote&gt;I hope more hospitals realize what talent is out there right now, a great time to hire someone to help with your Lean efforts -- getting started or bringing your program in-house after starting with consultants.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;At Saint Mary’s Health Care, Palmreuter spends much of his time finding and resolving administrative waste.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;One of his early successes came in the pharmacy at the health system’s Wege Center, which was having difficulty keeping up with the workload at certain times of the day. He worked with staff to optimize the delivery of drugs each day to patients and outside clients such as area nursing homes.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;He also consolidated two automated dispensing systems into one, &lt;span style=&quot;font-weight: bold;&quot;&gt;generating $240,000 in annual savings&lt;/span&gt;. The pharmacy also has been able to&lt;span style=&quot;font-weight: bold;&quot;&gt; pick up more business&lt;/span&gt; from outside clients.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In the surgical services department, he helped staff get a better handle on managing the inventory of supplies and equipment. The net savings: $700,000 by reducing inventory.&lt;/blockquote&gt;Great things to be working on, eh? Those are great results. They cut costs AND increased revenue by creating capacity. Hopefully, that&#39;s a great reminder to everyone that Lean can help create growth for a hospital &lt;b&gt;without &lt;/b&gt;requiring expensive capital expense.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;There&#39;s one little thing that jumped out at me from the article. Granted, it&#39;s about Steve and his transition, but if you were in his shoes, would you be a bit embarrassed with the &quot;he, he, he&quot;  focus on the lean expert in the article? &lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;That focus in probably the &lt;b&gt;writer&#39;s&lt;/b&gt; fault... changes like these in a hospital are most likely to happen when you have a learning partnership between the hospital staff and the change agent.  Yes, there are some places where it says he helped and coached staff, but there&#39;s a lot of &quot;he discovered&quot; and &quot;he found.&quot; It&#39;s better when the staff discovers waste and they find opportunities and they can do that when you teach them Lean principles and leaders create time for them to participate fully.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Some of the least rewarding work I ever did was in a manufacturing company that wouldn&#39;t give the front-line staff time to work on improvement (hmm, that actually sounds like many hospitals). I was expected to &quot;make them Lean,&quot; which is going to be as effective or sustainable as getting the staff involved (as I was always able to do in my work with hospitals that were embracing Lean, thankfully).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;That nitpicking (on the author of the article) aside, it seems that St. Mary&#39;s is lucky to have him, based on what Steve says in the article:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;“It’s not about just those home runs,” Palmreuter said. &lt;span style=&quot;font-weight: bold;&quot;&gt;“What we really need to be doing too is stringing together a lot of base hits.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;“How often do we walk right past that type of waste because we presume it’s not that big, so we assume it’s not worth our time?” he said. “We miss those opportunities every day because we just don’t have the right culture in place.”&lt;/blockquote&gt;Lots of little changes, many small improvements -- that&#39;s a key aspect of &quot;kaizen&quot; and lean. Not everything is a huge project, nor does everything even require a week-long event.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Congrats to Steve and the leaders and staff at St. Mary&#39;s. They are setting an example that, hopefully, more hospitals will follow.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;If you&#39;re in that career transition (or looking to find a guy like Steve, perhaps), join the discussion at my free site &lt;a href=&quot;http://movetohealthcare.ning.com/&quot;&gt;http://movetohealthcare.ning.com&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;center&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size:85%;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://feeds.feedburner.com/LeanBlog/&quot;&gt;Subscribe via RSS&lt;/a&gt;  | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanblog.org/&quot;&gt;Lean Blog Main Page&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanpodcast.org/&quot;&gt;Podcast&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.twitter.com/leanblog&quot;&gt;Twitter @leanblog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;blogger-post-footer&quot;&gt;Please check out my main blog page at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanblog.org/&quot;&gt;www.leanblog.org&lt;/a&gt;
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If you are reading this material on a website other than leanblog.org, planetlean.org, amazon.com, or a BlogBurst partner, the web site is possibly infringing on the author&#39;s copyright.&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://kanban.blogspot.com/feeds/2599326456888974255/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=7108456&amp;postID=2599326456888974255&amp;isPopup=true' title='5 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7108456/posts/default/2599326456888974255'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7108456/posts/default/2599326456888974255'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://kanban.blogspot.com/2009/12/lean-change-agents-move-to-healthcare.html' title='A Lean Change Agent&#39;s Move to Healthcare in Michigan'/><author><name>Mark Graban</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/07953086531083611251</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='32' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBC2ewG5wv4khS_3UfhWPWJTxC8VjhzB-LzQ-hycIa9s7qg_LDUSinCqiS0sVKd1h3ByprNuKFeZWuxPbygutJOAcLTA8xs8QwvanwqxKvzHygpTqQhezljZo9VOi-uWU/s220/twitter3.png'/></author><thr:total>5</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7108456.post-8298069430420546158</id><published>2009-12-09T04:00:00.002-05:00</published><updated>2009-12-09T06:16:42.719-05:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="5S"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Deming"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Healthcare"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Nursing"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Patient Safety"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Quality"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Standard Work"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="ThedaCare"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Workaround"/><title type='text'>Notes from My First IHI National Quality Forum (#ihi09)</title><content type='html'>&lt;p&gt;Today was an exciting day at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ihi.org/&quot;&gt;Institute for Healthcare Improvement&lt;/a&gt;&#39;s 21st annual National Forum on Healthcare Quality Improvement. It&#39;s my first time here, to learn and network. They have over 5,000 attendees who are committed to quality and patient safety improvement. The energy and enthusiasm is contagious (in a good way!). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;To read Twitter updates from attendees, &lt;a href=&quot;http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23ihi09&quot;&gt;search the hashtag #ihi09&lt;/a&gt; during the day on Wednesday, if you like.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;Apple-style-span&quot;  style=&quot;font-size:large;&quot;&gt;Donald Berwick&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I had a chance to briefly meet Dr. Donald Berwick before his keynote address, which &lt;a href=&quot;http://runningahospital.blogspot.com/2009/12/berwick-at-national-forum.html&quot;&gt;Paul Levy summarized here&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don mentioned Lean and Toyota methods four or five times during his talk and, early on, showed a number of slides with results from organizations like Denver Health and ThedaCare. One major theme of Don&#39;s was that the quality movement can&#39;t ignore the need for cost reduction, given financial realities. This is a message that ties in well with Lean, that quality improvement leads to cost reductions, in addition to all of the benefits for patients in avoiding harm and providing the best care possible.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;He made a provocative statement on &quot;value&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&quot;Health CARE has no intrinsic value, health DOES.&quot;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;He is suggesting that value to the customer (the patients) has more to do with outcomes than it does to activity and effort.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don also talked about the need for change and how:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&quot;Command and control solutions seem weaker every day.&quot;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;Apple-style-span&quot;  style=&quot;font-size:large;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;Supporting Nurses&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;One of the breakout sessions that had an impact one me was from Kaiser Permanente and Ascension Health about freeing up time for nurses to spend with patients.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;They cited a 2006 study that showed nurses spent only about 30% of their time in patient rooms due to waste of all varieties.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In looking at the factors that impacted nurse productivity, the studies showed that architecture and physical layout was NOT a statistically significant factor. They found high variability across shifts in the same hospital and across different nurses on the same shift.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The productivity was all a matter of personal work style and support process that often don&#39;t provide support so nurses can provide the right patient care.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The lack of standardized work is described by the presenter who said:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&quot;Everyone develops their own style.&quot;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;And&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&quot;They don&#39;t teach you in nursing school how to organize your time.&quot;&lt;/blockquote&gt;That seems like a recipe for inconsistent care and inconsistent quality.&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The recommendations for improving productivity and patient care included &lt;b&gt;having supplies and equipment available ON DEMAND at the point of use and the time of need.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;That sounds so basic and fundamental, doesn&#39;t it? Shocking to those of you from outside of healthcare? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;One health system did a study of their &quot;smart pumps&quot; and discovered that, due to a lack of organization and 5S and lack of standard process, that they had overpurchased this one item to the tune of $20 million since the pumps they had often couldn&#39;t be found, so additional ones got purchased. What an easily preventable form of waste and overspending.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Nurses often hoard and hide equipment as a workaround to make sure THEY can provide care to THEIR patients. It might seem selfish, but it&#39;s well-intended in the short-term, but does nothing to fix the real system. One presenter said the &quot;strangest&quot; place they found a piece of hoarded/hidden equipment was a pulse oximeter found in the &lt;b&gt;CEILING &lt;/b&gt;above the tile in a patient room. Nurses and hospital staff shouldn&#39;t have to go to such lengths to ensure they have the tools to do their jobs.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;One quote given about the lack of support to nurses was:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&quot;It&#39;s like they sent me a door but no door frame? What am I supposed to get done with that?&quot;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Whose job is it to make sure people have the right tools, equipment, supplies, and systems? Quoting Dr. Deming, it&#39;s top management&#39;s job.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The final principle they encouraged was &quot;patient-centered design&quot; of processes and spaces. Again, seems pretty basic to focus on the customer, eh?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;One final thought: a presenter opined that for all of the talk about the &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1RNCN_enUS337US337&amp;amp;sourceid=chrome&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;amp;q=%22hospital+of+the+future%22&quot;&gt;hospital of future&lt;/a&gt;&quot; (which every hospital thinks they are building, they said), that it doesn&#39;t really exist yet. If it did, such a hospital would have 25% to 30% better labor productivity and the presenters said that&#39;s not here. My suggestion was that they look at what ThedaCare has delivered through their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.healthcarevalueleaders.org/displayobject.cfm?id=1132&quot;&gt;Collaborative Care model&lt;/a&gt; - they have delivered such productivity improvements while also providing better quality. It is possible, now.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;Apple-style-span&quot;  style=&quot;font-size:large;&quot;&gt;Sorrel King&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Another highlight was being able to meet patient safety advocate Sorrel King in person finally (check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanblog.org/2009/11/leanblog-podcast-78-sorrel-king.html&quot;&gt;my podcast with her&lt;/a&gt; and her recent book, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0802119204?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;tag=markgraban&amp;amp;linkCode=as2&amp;amp;camp=1789&amp;amp;creative=390957&amp;amp;creativeASIN=0802119204&quot;&gt;Josie&#39;s Story: A Mother&#39;s Inspiring Crusade to Make Medical Care Safe&lt;/a&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=markgraban&amp;amp;l=as2&amp;amp;o=1&amp;amp;a=0802119204&quot; width=&quot;1&quot; height=&quot;1&quot; border=&quot;0&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; style=&quot;border:none !important; margin:0px !important;&quot; /&gt;. I&#39;m about 80% of the way through her book and I highly recommend it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;center&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size:85%;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://feeds.feedburner.com/LeanBlog/&quot;&gt;Subscribe via RSS&lt;/a&gt;  | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanblog.org/&quot;&gt;Lean Blog Main Page&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanpodcast.org/&quot;&gt;Podcast&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.twitter.com/leanblog&quot;&gt;Twitter @leanblog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;blogger-post-footer&quot;&gt;Please check out my main blog page at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanblog.org/&quot;&gt;www.leanblog.org&lt;/a&gt;
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If you are reading this material on a website other than leanblog.org, planetlean.org, amazon.com, or a BlogBurst partner, the web site is possibly infringing on the author&#39;s copyright.&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://kanban.blogspot.com/feeds/8298069430420546158/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=7108456&amp;postID=8298069430420546158&amp;isPopup=true' title='3 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7108456/posts/default/8298069430420546158'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7108456/posts/default/8298069430420546158'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://kanban.blogspot.com/2009/12/notes-from-my-first-ihi-national.html' title='Notes from My First IHI National Quality Forum (#ihi09)'/><author><name>Mark Graban</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/07953086531083611251</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='32' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBC2ewG5wv4khS_3UfhWPWJTxC8VjhzB-LzQ-hycIa9s7qg_LDUSinCqiS0sVKd1h3ByprNuKFeZWuxPbygutJOAcLTA8xs8QwvanwqxKvzHygpTqQhezljZo9VOi-uWU/s220/twitter3.png'/></author><thr:total>3</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7108456.post-3470344429806483661</id><published>2009-12-08T04:00:00.000-05:00</published><updated>2009-12-08T04:00:05.840-05:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Deming"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Healthcare"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Matt_May"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Patient Safety"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Sports"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Toussaint"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Toyota"/><title type='text'>Matthew May&#39;s Encounter with Tiger &amp; Goals of Perfection</title><content type='html'>&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.inpursuitofelegance.com/post/2009/12/03/My-Own-Tigers-Tale.aspx&quot;&gt;In Pursuit of Elegance | My Own Tiger&#39;s Tale&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://view.picapp.com/default.aspx?term=tiger%20woods%20swing&amp;amp;iid=5706805&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://cdn.picapp.com/ftp/Images/8/9/a/a/Tiger_Woods_plays_2af0.JPG?adImageId=8076962&amp;amp;imageId=5706805&quot; alt=&quot;Tiger Woods plays in round two at the Buick Open in Michigan&quot; border=&quot;0&quot; height=&quot;253&quot; width=&quot;380&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;script type=&quot;text/javascript&quot; src=&quot;http://cdn.pis.picapp.com/IamProd/PicAppPIS/JavaScript/PisV4.js&quot;&gt;&lt;/script&gt;&lt;br /&gt;What does Tiger Woods have to do with Lean Thinking and hospitals? Read on...&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Our good friend, &lt;a href=&quot;http://twitter.com/matthewemay&quot;&gt;Matthew May&lt;/a&gt;, met Tiger Woods at his health club in California back in 2001. He re-visited that encounter on his blog just recently, I guess given recent salacious events (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1945159,00.html&quot;&gt;click here for a cheesy Chinese CGI reenactment, if you must&lt;/a&gt;). You should check out Matthew&#39;s latest book, also: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0385526490?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;tag=markgraban&amp;amp;linkCode=as2&amp;amp;camp=1789&amp;amp;creative=390957&amp;amp;creativeASIN=0385526490&quot;&gt;In Pursuit of Elegance: Why the Best Ideas Have Something Missing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=markgraban&amp;amp;l=as2&amp;amp;o=1&amp;amp;a=0385526490&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; style=&quot;border: medium none  ! important; margin: 0px ! important;&quot; border=&quot;0&quot; height=&quot;1&quot; width=&quot;1&quot; /&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Matthew took advantage of the chance to ask Tiger why he kept re-inventing his swing even though he was already wildly successful.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;So I asked him: “What really drives you you to keep breaking what isn&#39;t broken?” He said, &quot;The number 18.&quot; I immediately thought: &quot;Aha, that&#39;s the number of majors Jack Nicklaus won. So that&#39;s the goal.&quot; I said as much. Tiger said, &lt;span style=&quot;font-weight: bold;&quot;&gt;&quot;That&#39;s what people think, and I let them. But 18? That&#39;s a perfect golf score.&quot;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;That says it all right there. The point is this: &lt;span style=&quot;font-weight: bold;&quot;&gt;The pursuit of perfection is not focused on achieving perfection, it’s focused on chasing it.&lt;/span&gt; Approached as a process, it can drive breakthroughs. Approached as goal, it can actually block innovation. &lt;span style=&quot;font-weight: bold;&quot;&gt;Perfection is unachievable…it’ll never happen&lt;/span&gt;. Unless you’re Buddha I guess. That’s what throws people, at least in our Western culture. We’ve become impatient with mastery. &lt;span style=&quot;font-weight: bold;&quot;&gt;If you can’t achieve perfection, why bother pursuing it? Answer: because you have to. Otherwise you’ll always be a follower.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;One of the key &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0743249275?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;tag=markgraban&amp;amp;linkCode=as2&amp;amp;camp=1789&amp;amp;creative=390957&amp;amp;creativeASIN=0743249275&quot;&gt;Lean Thinking&lt;/a&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=markgraban&amp;amp;l=as2&amp;amp;o=1&amp;amp;a=0743249275&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; style=&quot;border: medium none  ! important; margin: 0px ! important;&quot; border=&quot;0&quot; height=&quot;1&quot; width=&quot;1&quot; /&gt; principles is the never-ending pursuit of perfection. That&#39;s one of the hardest Toyota principles for others to emulate (that and taking the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Toyota_Way#Section_I_.E2.80.94_Long-Term_Philosophy&quot;&gt;long-term perspective&lt;/a&gt;, something Tiger seems to have not done in his personal life).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is Toyota perfect? &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.google.com/news?q=toyota%20quality%20problems&amp;amp;oe=utf-8&amp;amp;rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&amp;amp;client=firefox-a&amp;amp;um=1&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;amp;sa=N&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;tab=wn&quot;&gt;No, of course not&lt;/a&gt;, but they strive to be as good as they can possibly be, not just to be better than their competitors.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;Many hospitals fall into the benchmarking trap. If you&#39;re better than your local peers or if you&#39;re in the 90th percentile nationally in some measure, who cares? If there&#39;s a bit gap between your current performance and perfection, than you still have work to do.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Tiger&#39;s goal is shooting an 18. Impossible? Maybe, but that&#39;s the only target worth shooting for if you have the drive and discipline to be as good as Tiger.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;If you&#39;re a hospital, the only acceptable goal for preventable patient harm is ZERO incidents. Seems impossible? Not always. &lt;a href=&quot;http://runningahospital.blogspot.com/2009/12/when-great-big-zero-is.html&quot;&gt;Paul Levy recently blogged about a hospital that has gone 18 months without a blood stream infection&lt;/a&gt; that results from a central venous line. When the goal is perfection, you develop breakthrough processes that get you there. If the bar is set much lower, you can more easily tolerate the mediocre status quo -- and patients die.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&#39;ve seen far too many hospitals set a non-zero goal for patient falls -- there&#39;s a difference between what&#39;s &quot;expected&quot; given past performance and a &quot;goal&quot; that you often see on a chart or a dashboard. A goal of 3 falls per month isn&#39;t very inspirational, is it? Does that drive people to be creative and innovative? I&#39;m not saying you should set a &quot;target&quot; in the sense that people are fearful of punishment for not meeting the goal of zero -- targets like that drive dysfunction and probably lead to more people getting hurt, as Dr. Deming taught.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;One hospital I previously worked with, one of their leaders said they had previously benchmarked other hospitals and, as a result, they had &quot;&lt;span style=&quot;font-weight: bold;&quot;&gt;delusions of excellence.&lt;/span&gt;&quot; The rude expression that sometimes gets used is they were the &quot;&lt;span style=&quot;font-weight: bold;&quot;&gt;cream of the crap&lt;/span&gt;.&quot; I don&#39;t use that phrase myself, since it&#39;s a bit disrespectful, but I&#39;ve heard it from many hospital leaders who were no longer tolerant of being far from as good as they could be.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The hospital leader I&#39;m thinking of realized, through learning Lean thinking, that if they benchmarked their performance against perfection, they weren&#39;t really that good. Actually, if they just benchmarked their performance against what was PRACTICAL by taking waste out of the process, they weren&#39;t nearly as good as they became just a year later through the continued study and application of lean management practices and principles.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;As &lt;a href=&quot;http://runningahospital.blogspot.com/2009/12/steps-to-change-culture.html&quot;&gt;Paul Levy also blogged about&lt;/a&gt;, John Toussaint gets it. As a patient safety goal:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&quot;Zero is possible, and from a leadership perspective, we should ask for nothing less.&quot;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Let&#39;s look at a hypothetical chart that represents productivity, a higher number is better:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a onblur=&quot;try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}&quot; href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigE4UY4DWEwZ35dCUzUEwlYl330Z03hy5jdgV64gp4htZbSdkvXXGREyBVp12wjsK0R5Wvp-lDH6guWDCbN48teG9tkI-3OBH7AQP8nfvydxxcYShGltfYBhhM44Na5cYMPCN7/s1600-h/comparison.jpg&quot;&gt;&lt;img style=&quot;margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 246px;&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigE4UY4DWEwZ35dCUzUEwlYl330Z03hy5jdgV64gp4htZbSdkvXXGREyBVp12wjsK0R5Wvp-lDH6guWDCbN48teG9tkI-3OBH7AQP8nfvydxxcYShGltfYBhhM44Na5cYMPCN7/s400/comparison.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; id=&quot;BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412332135267194818&quot; border=&quot;0&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;Do you feel satisfied that you&#39;re better than your competitors? Do you even KNOW the gap between yourself and a practical Lean State? Many leaders and organizations don&#39;t even know this gap because they don&#39;t know how much waste their is in their process.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;To steal a line from a company&#39;s advertising slogan, Are You a Tiger? And we&#39;re talking professionally... are you chasing perfection even if it seems impossible?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;center&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size:85%;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://feeds.feedburner.com/LeanBlog/&quot;&gt;Subscribe via RSS&lt;/a&gt;  | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanblog.org/&quot;&gt;Lean Blog Main Page&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanpodcast.org/&quot;&gt;Podcast&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.twitter.com/leanblog&quot;&gt;Twitter @leanblog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;blogger-post-footer&quot;&gt;Please check out my main blog page at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanblog.org/&quot;&gt;www.leanblog.org&lt;/a&gt;
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If you are reading this material on a website other than leanblog.org, planetlean.org, amazon.com, or a BlogBurst partner, the web site is possibly infringing on the author&#39;s copyright.&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://kanban.blogspot.com/feeds/3470344429806483661/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=7108456&amp;postID=3470344429806483661&amp;isPopup=true' title='2 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7108456/posts/default/3470344429806483661'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7108456/posts/default/3470344429806483661'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://kanban.blogspot.com/2009/12/matthew-mays-encounter-with-tiger-goals.html' title='Matthew May&#39;s Encounter with Tiger &amp; Goals of Perfection'/><author><name>Mark Graban</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/07953086531083611251</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='32' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBC2ewG5wv4khS_3UfhWPWJTxC8VjhzB-LzQ-hycIa9s7qg_LDUSinCqiS0sVKd1h3ByprNuKFeZWuxPbygutJOAcLTA8xs8QwvanwqxKvzHygpTqQhezljZo9VOi-uWU/s220/twitter3.png'/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigE4UY4DWEwZ35dCUzUEwlYl330Z03hy5jdgV64gp4htZbSdkvXXGREyBVp12wjsK0R5Wvp-lDH6guWDCbN48teG9tkI-3OBH7AQP8nfvydxxcYShGltfYBhhM44Na5cYMPCN7/s72-c/comparison.jpg" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>2</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7108456.post-3396196326449903218</id><published>2009-12-07T04:00:00.003-05:00</published><updated>2009-12-07T04:00:03.858-05:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Deming"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Detroit Three"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Ford"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Government"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Healthcare"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Leadership"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Toyota"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Womack"/><title type='text'>Meeting Newt Gingrich, a Lean Champion</title><content type='html'>I had a huge thrill a few weeks back, seeing former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich give a talk at the Ontario Hospital Association annual event in Toronto. I had a chance to meet him briefly and had a quick exchange about lean in healthcare, something for which Newt has long been a loud proponent. He seemed genuinely interested when he asked about my talk the day before about lean.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a onblur=&quot;try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}&quot; href=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfMpHImb8Mwys8zHCm6rP8Ul0TNrD6Z5TaH-cvYh8fQSq429o_eL_oqkXutZxIWgDfvR-UMKTHOElJ-1cB6csHH7NreGLgct2n57Loscu1e0dmUO7q8DVZQ7LJsM6CXKZpzl3i/s1600-h/IMG_0574.jpg&quot;&gt;&lt;img style=&quot;margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 391px; height: 295px;&quot; src=&quot;https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfMpHImb8Mwys8zHCm6rP8Ul0TNrD6Z5TaH-cvYh8fQSq429o_eL_oqkXutZxIWgDfvR-UMKTHOElJ-1cB6csHH7NreGLgct2n57Loscu1e0dmUO7q8DVZQ7LJsM6CXKZpzl3i/s400/IMG_0574.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; id=&quot;BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412167666994510002&quot; border=&quot;0&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;One of Newt&#39;s projects is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.healthtransformation.net/&quot;&gt;Center for Healthcare Transformation&lt;/a&gt;. He gave an endorsement for the back cover of Naida Grunden&#39;s excellent book &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1563273675?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;tag=leanmanufac02-20&amp;amp;linkCode=as2&amp;amp;camp=1789&amp;amp;creative=390957&amp;amp;creativeASIN=1563273675&quot;&gt;The Pittsburgh Way to Efficient Healthcare: Improving Patient Care Using Toyota Based Methods&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;em&gt;Every person who cares about modernizing health in America should read this book. If we could understand the Toyota system in health, we would save thousands of lives and billions of dollars.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;In his talk, the topic was &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/320072/prescription_e-health&quot;&gt;e-Health&lt;/a&gt;,&quot; covering electronic medical records and the like. Very much a Lean Thinker, Newt encouraged the crowd to not look at technology as a silver bullet -- they also have to work on process improvement, using methods including Lean. Newt spent much more time talking about process innovation than he talked about technology, which I really appreciated.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;On the one hand, Newt said there is a &lt;span style=&quot;font-weight: bold;&quot;&gt;moral&lt;/span&gt; case for Electronic Health Records and the positive impact on quality. On the other hand, technology alone is not enough. He said we have to combine continuous improvement and the Toyota model with technology to be successful. Newt said we have to get the silos working together, through better processes, to improve quality and safety.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Some points he made on the power of electronic systems:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt;&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHzq_gZOyJQ&quot;&gt;Paper kills&lt;/a&gt;&quot; -- EHR can improve safety and the patient must be a co-owner of that information.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;The cell phone is the future of medicine in public health -- everybody has them.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Imagine sending a video of your grandmother at 2 am to your doctor and the impact that could have on care.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Expected efficiency improvements from not duplicating care and tests and using outcomes data to determine the best care.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;We can help &quot;track down cheats and crooks&quot; to detect and eliminate fraud (costing CMS between $70 and $120 Billion a year - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fiercehealthcare.com/story/cms-eyes-emrs-fight-fraud-waste-medicare-fraud-numbers-moving-target/2009-11-23&quot;&gt;news link&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;Newt, being a historian (that&#39;s his PhD), gave an amazingly detailed history of Dr. Deming&#39;s influence on Toyota and the impact of lean on the auto industry. Some audio is embedded below (about four minutes), where he starts with Henry Ford and carries this through &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0743299795?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;tag=markgraban&amp;amp;linkCode=as2&amp;amp;camp=1789&amp;amp;creative=390957&amp;amp;creativeASIN=0743299795&quot;&gt;The Machine That Changed the World&lt;/a&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=markgraban&amp;amp;l=as2&amp;amp;o=1&amp;amp;a=0743299795&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; style=&quot;border: medium none  ! important; margin: 0px ! important;&quot; border=&quot;0&quot; height=&quot;1&quot; width=&quot;1&quot; /&gt; and beyond:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;center&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;iframe src=&quot;http://www.hipcast.com/playweb?audioid=Pd2fec293f93a49256e85735b5f29dd76Yll6QVREY2Fx&amp;amp;buffer=5&amp;amp;shape=6&amp;amp;fc=FFFFFF&amp;amp;pc=0099CC&amp;amp;kc=0000CC&amp;amp;bc=FFFFFF&amp;amp;brand=1&amp;amp;player=ap29&quot; frameborder=&quot;0&quot; height=&quot;40&quot; scrolling=&quot;no&quot; width=&quot;138&quot;&gt; &lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;He raises an excellent point that lean change is difficult since you&#39;re trying to change the culture. Lean geeks will know he didn&#39;t get every detail right (NUMMI is in Northern California), but Newt certainly has a deeper and more detailed understand of Deming, Toyota, and quality improvement than any other major political figure.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;He raises a provocative question -- how can we get every employee in the hospital engaged in making suggestions and improving processes? This is part of the coming &quot;fundamental change in how we deliver healthcare -- &lt;span style=&quot;font-weight: bold;&quot;&gt;you&#39;re going to see a lot of Henry Ford-type moments.&lt;/span&gt;&quot; I agree with his statement that we need &quot;a workforce and people that are working together.&quot;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In keeping with Dr. Deming&#39;s teachings and lean principles, Newt said this gem:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&quot;Cost control is a bureaucratic term that never works.&quot;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Ironically, focusing on costs often leads costs to go up. Improving processes and improving quality inevitably leads to true cost reduction. Newt understands that and we need his voice and those ideas in the healthcare debate.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;He also understands the challenges of change management and leadership, saying:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&quot;If you brute force a large enough change, you guarantee it will implode.&quot;&lt;/blockquote&gt;That&#39;s something to keep in mind in our lean work and systems implementation. Are hospitals &quot;brute forcing&quot; the use of electronic systems by doctors? Are people truly working together or are hospital senior leaders just pushing new things on people?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Newt weaved in some other historical tales contrasting the Wright Brothers and the federal government in their development of the first airplanes. He pointed out how the Wright Flyer wasn&#39;t given to the Smithsonian for many decades due to a long-running feud and rivalry, where the Smithsonian refused to believe or credit the Wrights as the first to fly (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,105513,00.html&quot;&gt;this news story&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The Wrights followed an iterative &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDCA&quot;&gt;PDCA&lt;/a&gt; process, something that reminded me of Steven Spear&#39;s writing in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0071499881?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;tag=markgraban&amp;amp;linkCode=as2&amp;amp;camp=1789&amp;amp;creative=390957&amp;amp;creativeASIN=0071499881&quot;&gt;Chasing the Rabbit&lt;/a&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=markgraban&amp;amp;l=as2&amp;amp;o=1&amp;amp;a=0071499881&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; style=&quot;border: medium none  ! important; margin: 0px ! important;&quot; border=&quot;0&quot; height=&quot;1&quot; width=&quot;1&quot; /&gt;, the idea that nobody designs a perfect system. What matters is how quickly you innovate.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Newt told of how the Wrights would test their plane over land, so each time it failed and crashed, they could repair the wood structure and try again. The Wrights had anticipated this failure by bringing extra wood from Ohio to North Carolina.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Contrast that to the Smithsonian approach of a big bang development process:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;intelliTXT&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;intelliTXT&quot;&gt;Underwritten by a $50,000 War Department contract, Langley tested an airplane on Oct. 7, 1903. Resembling a giant dragonfly, the &lt;b&gt;&quot;Aerodrome&quot;&lt;/b&gt; (&lt;a bitly=&quot;BITLY_PROCESSED&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot; href=&quot;http://clickit.go2net.com/search?cid=307797&amp;amp;site=srch&amp;amp;area=is.clicktracking&amp;amp;shape=link&amp;amp;cp=info.foxnws&amp;amp;clickurl=http%3A%2F%2Fsearch.foxnews.com%2Finfo.foxnws%2Fredirs_all.htm%3Fpgtarg%3Dwbsdogpile&amp;amp;ext_qcat=web&amp;amp;ext_qkw=&quot;&gt;search&lt;/a&gt;) was 54 feet long and had two 48-foot wings.   &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;intelliTXT&quot;&gt;&lt;p&gt;When launched from a houseboat on the Potomac River, the Aerodrome &lt;span style=&quot;font-weight: bold;&quot;&gt;&quot;simply slid into the water like a handful of mortar,&quot; reported observers.&lt;/span&gt; The effort was so dismal the New York Times editorialized that one million to 10 million years would be needed to develop an airplane.&lt;/p&gt;              &lt;p&gt;After another failure on Dec. 8, Langley blamed faulty launch equipment — not his design. The discouraged War Department ended the project.&lt;/p&gt;              &lt;p&gt;Nine days later, the Wrights flew their airplane 100 feet in 12 seconds — seemingly, straight into the history books.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;span id=&quot;intelliTXT&quot;&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Since the plane was in the Potomac, it was a total loss and they couldn&#39;t learn from the experience.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;While, politically, Newt probably intends the story to point out the foibles of central government, it&#39;s illustrative in many ways. Is a hospital&#39;s EMR system a &quot;big bang&quot; that HAS to be right (is assumed to be right) the first time? Or are they taking an iterative Wright Brothers approach?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&#39;ll be blogging soon about seeing Eric Ries, the Lean Startups guy, who tells similar stories about software startups - not surprisingly, the iterative approach works far better than the big bang development approach.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It was a real pleasure to meet Newt and to see him talk about the need for Lean and Dr. Deming&#39;s ideas in healthcare.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;center&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size:85%;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://feeds.feedburner.com/LeanBlog/&quot;&gt;Subscribe via RSS&lt;/a&gt;  | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanblog.org/&quot;&gt;Lean Blog Main Page&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanpodcast.org/&quot;&gt;Podcast&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.twitter.com/leanblog&quot;&gt;Twitter @leanblog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;blogger-post-footer&quot;&gt;Please check out my main blog page at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanblog.org/&quot;&gt;www.leanblog.org&lt;/a&gt;
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If you are reading this material on a website other than leanblog.org, planetlean.org, amazon.com, or a BlogBurst partner, the web site is possibly infringing on the author&#39;s copyright.&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://kanban.blogspot.com/feeds/3396196326449903218/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=7108456&amp;postID=3396196326449903218&amp;isPopup=true' title='1 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7108456/posts/default/3396196326449903218'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7108456/posts/default/3396196326449903218'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://kanban.blogspot.com/2009/12/meeting-newt-gingrich-lean-champion.html' title='Meeting Newt Gingrich, a Lean Champion'/><author><name>Mark Graban</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/07953086531083611251</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='32' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBC2ewG5wv4khS_3UfhWPWJTxC8VjhzB-LzQ-hycIa9s7qg_LDUSinCqiS0sVKd1h3ByprNuKFeZWuxPbygutJOAcLTA8xs8QwvanwqxKvzHygpTqQhezljZo9VOi-uWU/s220/twitter3.png'/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfMpHImb8Mwys8zHCm6rP8Ul0TNrD6Z5TaH-cvYh8fQSq429o_eL_oqkXutZxIWgDfvR-UMKTHOElJ-1cB6csHH7NreGLgct2n57Loscu1e0dmUO7q8DVZQ7LJsM6CXKZpzl3i/s72-c/IMG_0574.jpg" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>1</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7108456.post-7491849598802480307</id><published>2009-12-06T06:49:00.001-05:00</published><updated>2009-12-06T11:52:09.252-05:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Apple"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Ford"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Leadership"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Toyota"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="WSJ"/><title type='text'>Will Changing the CEO Help GM?</title><content type='html'>I don&#39;t mean to kick Fritz Henderson while he&#39;s down, after &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1944544,00.html?xid=rss-topstories&quot;&gt;he resigned as CEO of Government Motors&lt;/a&gt; this week.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;He resigned on Tuesday and I didn&#39;t even learn about it until Thursday, as I was under a proverbial rock, busy teaching a workshop those two days. In my briefest of news scans, I guess he didn&#39;t knock the White House party crashers off the top of the news, but that&#39;s a different sad story.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The WSJ had a good article talking about how changing the CEO alone rarely has the impact people think.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748703735004574575880529756434.html#mod=todays_us_section_b&quot;&gt;The Intelligent Investor: Why Changing the CEO May Not Change the Company - WSJ.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you took the CEOs with the best track records and brought them in to run the businesses with the worst performance, &lt;span style=&quot;font-weight: bold;&quot;&gt;how often would those companies become more profitable?&lt;/span&gt; According to economist Antoinette Schoar of Massachusetts Institute of Technology&#39;s Sloan School of Management, who has studied the effects of hundreds of management changes, &lt;span style=&quot;font-weight: bold;&quot;&gt;the answer is roughly 60%. That isn&#39;t much better than the flip of a coin.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;a bitly=&quot;BITLY_PROCESSED&quot; name=&quot;U103167198625AH&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Some people,&quot; Prof. Schoar says, &quot;may have this almost blind belief that the manager at the top changes everything. &lt;span style=&quot;font-weight: bold;&quot;&gt;Our results show that managers do matter, but they don&#39;t change everything.&quot;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;I &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aleanblog.org+wagoner&amp;amp;ie=utf-8&amp;amp;oe=utf-8&amp;amp;aq=t&amp;amp;rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&amp;amp;client=firefox-a&quot;&gt;wasn&#39;t a fan of Rick Wagoner&lt;/a&gt; and I didn&#39;t think Henderson was a great change agent or figurehead that screamed &quot;change.&quot; Maybe I was putting too much stock in him as one man. What about the overall culture and systems of an organization? Can one man fix all of that? Is &lt;a href=&quot;http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/steve_jobs/2009/index.html&quot;&gt;Steve Jobs, as &quot;CEO of the Decade&quot;&lt;/a&gt; a uniquely heroic force of nature or is that perception wrong as well at Apple?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&#39;m certainly not a fan of the new guy, former AT&amp;amp;T CEO Ed Whitacre. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/106450&quot;&gt;AT&amp;amp;T isn&#39;t known for being a real customer-focused company&lt;/a&gt;, so what positive traits will Whitacre bring to the mix? His TV ads for GM, &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.google.com/news?q=toyota%20recalls&amp;amp;oe=utf-8&amp;amp;rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&amp;amp;client=firefox-a&amp;amp;um=1&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;amp;sa=N&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;tab=wn&quot;&gt;of the &quot;ego ad&quot; genre&lt;/a&gt;, (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ni-VeMEx6pA&quot;&gt;Sprint&#39;s Dan Hesse&lt;/a&gt; for another bad example) proved little more than his ability to walk and talk at the same time. He&#39;s no Lee Iacocca (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nppKMomMP-4&quot;&gt;his 1984 ad here&lt;/a&gt; - makes for an interesting side-by-side comparison of content and style).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;object height=&quot;324&quot; width=&quot;400&quot;&gt;&lt;param name=&quot;movie&quot; value=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/v/jpqr4_ONew0&amp;amp;hl=en_US&amp;amp;fs=1&amp;amp;&quot;&gt;&lt;param name=&quot;allowFullScreen&quot; value=&quot;true&quot;&gt;&lt;param name=&quot;allowscriptaccess&quot; value=&quot;always&quot;&gt;&lt;embed src=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/v/jpqr4_ONew0&amp;amp;hl=en_US&amp;amp;fs=1&amp;amp;&quot; type=&quot;application/x-shockwave-flash&quot; allowscriptaccess=&quot;always&quot; allowfullscreen=&quot;true&quot; height=&quot;324&quot; width=&quot;400&quot;&gt;&lt;/embed&gt;&lt;/object&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Whitacre knows nothing (his admission) about the auto industry, is this a plus? It may have proved helpful for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&amp;amp;safe=off&amp;amp;client=firefox-a&amp;amp;rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&amp;amp;hs=INf&amp;amp;q=site%3Aleanblog.org+mulally&amp;amp;aq=f&amp;amp;oq=&amp;amp;aqi=&quot;&gt;Alan Mulally&lt;/a&gt; moving from Boeing to Ford, but what of this case?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;If any organization is struggling, including a hospital, is changing the CEO a pancea or silver bullet? The research would suggest it&#39;s nowhere close to being a cure all. What have you seen?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;What do you think of Fritz being forced out? Will this be a positive tipping point for GM or are they just headed for more of the same? Will &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.autoblog.com/2009/06/25/new-toyota-ceo-takes-30-pay-cut-sees-no-recovery-for-two-years/&quot;&gt;Toyota&#39;s new CEO&lt;/a&gt; be more effective at bringing needed change to that organization, given their &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.google.com/news?q=toyota%20recalls&amp;amp;oe=utf-8&amp;amp;rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&amp;amp;client=firefox-a&amp;amp;um=1&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;amp;sa=N&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;tab=wn&quot;&gt;recent quality problems&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;center&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size:85%;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://feeds.feedburner.com/LeanBlog/&quot;&gt;Subscribe via RSS&lt;/a&gt;  | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanblog.org/&quot;&gt;Lean Blog Main Page&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanpodcast.org/&quot;&gt;Podcast&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.twitter.com/leanblog&quot;&gt;Twitter @leanblog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;blogger-post-footer&quot;&gt;Please check out my main blog page at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanblog.org/&quot;&gt;www.leanblog.org&lt;/a&gt;
  63.  
  64. The RSS feed content you are reading is copyrighted by the author, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.markgraban.com/&quot;&gt;Mark Graban&lt;/a&gt;.
  65.  
  66. If you are reading this material on a website other than leanblog.org, planetlean.org, amazon.com, or a BlogBurst partner, the web site is possibly infringing on the author&#39;s copyright.&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://kanban.blogspot.com/feeds/7491849598802480307/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=7108456&amp;postID=7491849598802480307&amp;isPopup=true' title='4 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7108456/posts/default/7491849598802480307'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7108456/posts/default/7491849598802480307'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://kanban.blogspot.com/2009/07/general-motors-gm-reinvention-tell.html' title='Will Changing the CEO Help GM?'/><author><name>Mark Graban</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/07953086531083611251</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='32' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBC2ewG5wv4khS_3UfhWPWJTxC8VjhzB-LzQ-hycIa9s7qg_LDUSinCqiS0sVKd1h3ByprNuKFeZWuxPbygutJOAcLTA8xs8QwvanwqxKvzHygpTqQhezljZo9VOi-uWU/s220/twitter3.png'/></author><thr:total>4</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7108456.post-2399991087056922177</id><published>2009-12-05T10:23:00.001-05:00</published><updated>2009-12-05T10:25:12.844-05:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Deming"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Video"/><title type='text'>Funny &quot;The Office&quot; Clip on Morale and Rewards</title><content type='html'>Funny clip from The Office this week, watch through the end for the list of &quot;awesome&quot; workplaces where Andy saw Employee of the Month programs.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;object height=&quot;266&quot; width=&quot;400&quot;&gt;&lt;param name=&quot;movie&quot; value=&quot;http://www.hulu.com/embed/FBFbjOc_gzK6anMyoo6kww/106/i133&quot;&gt;&lt;param name=&quot;allowFullScreen&quot; value=&quot;true&quot;&gt;&lt;embed src=&quot;http://www.hulu.com/embed/FBFbjOc_gzK6anMyoo6kww/106/i133&quot; type=&quot;application/x-shockwave-flash&quot; allowfullscreen=&quot;true&quot; height=&quot;266&quot; width=&quot;400&quot;&gt;&lt;/embed&gt;&lt;/object&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Dr. Deming would have, of course, called these programs a &quot;lottery&quot; that do nothing that destroy morale by trying to create individual competition and rewards in the place of cooperation and customer focus. Funny clip, though.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;center&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size:85%;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://feeds.feedburner.com/LeanBlog/&quot;&gt;Subscribe via RSS&lt;/a&gt;  | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanblog.org/&quot;&gt;Lean Blog Main Page&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanpodcast.org/&quot;&gt;Podcast&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.twitter.com/leanblog&quot;&gt;Twitter @leanblog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;blogger-post-footer&quot;&gt;Please check out my main blog page at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanblog.org/&quot;&gt;www.leanblog.org&lt;/a&gt;
  67.  
  68. The RSS feed content you are reading is copyrighted by the author, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.markgraban.com/&quot;&gt;Mark Graban&lt;/a&gt;.
  69.  
  70. If you are reading this material on a website other than leanblog.org, planetlean.org, amazon.com, or a BlogBurst partner, the web site is possibly infringing on the author&#39;s copyright.&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://kanban.blogspot.com/feeds/2399991087056922177/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=7108456&amp;postID=2399991087056922177&amp;isPopup=true' title='0 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7108456/posts/default/2399991087056922177'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7108456/posts/default/2399991087056922177'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://kanban.blogspot.com/2009/12/funny-office-clip-on-morale-and-rewards.html' title='Funny &quot;The Office&quot; Clip on Morale and Rewards'/><author><name>Mark Graban</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/07953086531083611251</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='32' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBC2ewG5wv4khS_3UfhWPWJTxC8VjhzB-LzQ-hycIa9s7qg_LDUSinCqiS0sVKd1h3ByprNuKFeZWuxPbygutJOAcLTA8xs8QwvanwqxKvzHygpTqQhezljZo9VOi-uWU/s220/twitter3.png'/></author><thr:total>0</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7108456.post-2969590476833445098</id><published>2009-12-04T04:00:00.000-05:00</published><updated>2009-12-04T04:00:03.327-05:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Healthcare"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Podcast"/><title type='text'>LeanBlog Podcast #80 - Joan Wellman, Lean in Healthcare</title><content type='html'>&lt;a onblur=&quot;try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}&quot; href=&quot;http://www.joanwellmanassociates.com/team/img/i_wellman.png&quot;&gt;&lt;img style=&quot;margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 117px; height: 107px;&quot; src=&quot;http://www.joanwellmanassociates.com/team/img/i_wellman.png&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; border=&quot;0&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;This episode is a discussion with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joanwellmanassociates.com/team.html&quot;&gt;Joan Wellman&lt;/a&gt;, of the consulting firm &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joanwellmanassociates.com/index.html&quot;&gt;Joan Wellman &amp;amp; Associates&lt;/a&gt;. Joan is a real pioneer in the lean healthcare arena, having started her initial work with a hospital in 1995 -- I haven&#39;t found anybody who started this work earlier. We first met in Seattle a few months back and I&#39;m thrilled to bring you this discussion about the early days of lean healthcare and her thoughts on the potential for the future.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;p&gt;For earlier episodes, visit the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanblog.org/2006/07/leanblog-podcast-main-page.html&quot;&gt;main Podcast page&lt;/a&gt;, which includes information on how to subscribe via RSS or via Apple iTunes. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can use the player (use the VCR-type controls) below to listen to a &quot;streaming&quot; version of the podcast (or &lt;a href=&quot;http://feeds.feedburner.com/Leanblog_podcast&quot;&gt;click here for the streaming audio and RSS subscription&lt;/a&gt;). The streaming link is faster for one-time listening (hardly any delay to start listening). Or you can use the download link to put it on your iPod or other MP3 player.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;center&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;iframe src=&quot;http://www.hipcast.com/playweb?audioid=P98a9feec49f26b5fcbbafb31e2e3a608Yll6QVREY2F2&amp;amp;buffer=5&amp;amp;shape=6&amp;amp;fc=FFFFFF&amp;amp;pc=0099CC&amp;amp;kc=0000CC&amp;amp;bc=FFFFFF&amp;amp;brand=1&amp;amp;player=ap29&quot; frameborder=&quot;0&quot; height=&quot;40&quot; scrolling=&quot;no&quot; width=&quot;138&quot;&gt; &lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanpodcast.com/80_LeanBlog_Podcast_JoanWellman_Dec4_2009.mp3&quot; rel=&quot;enclosure&quot;&gt;MP3 File&lt;/a&gt; Right-Click to &quot;Save As&quot;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanpodcast.com/AAC_80_JoanWellman_LeanBlogPodcast.m4a&quot;&gt;Enhanced AAC File&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you have feedback on the podcast, or any questions for me or my guests, you can email me at &lt;a href=&quot;mailto:leanpodcast@gmail.com&quot;&gt;leanpodcast@gmail.com&lt;/a&gt; or you can call and leave a voicemail by calling the &quot;Lean Line&quot; at (817) 776-LEAN (817-776-5326) or contact me via Skype id &quot;mgraban&quot;. Please give your location and your first name. Any comments (email or voicemail) might be used in follow ups to the podcast.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;center&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size:85%;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://feeds.feedburner.com/LeanBlog/&quot;&gt;Subscribe via RSS&lt;/a&gt;  | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanblog.org/&quot;&gt;Lean Blog Main Page&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanpodcast.org/&quot;&gt;Podcast&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.twitter.com/leanblog&quot;&gt;Twitter @leanblog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;center style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;blogger-post-footer&quot;&gt;Please check out my main blog page at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanblog.org/&quot;&gt;www.leanblog.org&lt;/a&gt;
  71.  
  72. The RSS feed content you are reading is copyrighted by the author, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.markgraban.com/&quot;&gt;Mark Graban&lt;/a&gt;.
  73.  
  74. If you are reading this material on a website other than leanblog.org, planetlean.org, amazon.com, or a BlogBurst partner, the web site is possibly infringing on the author&#39;s copyright.&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://kanban.blogspot.com/feeds/2969590476833445098/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=7108456&amp;postID=2969590476833445098&amp;isPopup=true' title='1 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7108456/posts/default/2969590476833445098'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7108456/posts/default/2969590476833445098'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://kanban.blogspot.com/2009/12/leanblog-podcast-80-joan-wellman-lean.html' title='LeanBlog Podcast #80 - Joan Wellman, Lean in Healthcare'/><author><name>Mark Graban</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/07953086531083611251</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='32' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBC2ewG5wv4khS_3UfhWPWJTxC8VjhzB-LzQ-hycIa9s7qg_LDUSinCqiS0sVKd1h3ByprNuKFeZWuxPbygutJOAcLTA8xs8QwvanwqxKvzHygpTqQhezljZo9VOi-uWU/s220/twitter3.png'/></author><thr:total>1</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7108456.post-868288003239786787</id><published>2009-12-03T04:00:00.001-05:00</published><updated>2009-12-03T06:23:58.298-05:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Detroit Three"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Factory Examples"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Healthcare"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Layoffs"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Toyota"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Video"/><title type='text'>Lean as a Way to Save Manufacturing Featured on CNN</title><content type='html'>&lt;a onblur=&quot;try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}&quot; href=&quot;http://www.martinmusic.com/siteimages/Manufacturers%20Logos/D%27Addario%20logo.jpg&quot;&gt;&lt;img style=&quot;margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 165px; height: 48px;&quot; src=&quot;http://www.martinmusic.com/siteimages/Manufacturers%20Logos/D%27Addario%20logo.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; border=&quot;0&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;Hat tip to blog reader Steven H. for sending this video my way. &lt;p&gt;It&#39;s always nice to see Lean featured in the mainstream media, including CNN. &lt;a href=&quot;http://money.cnn.com/video/smallbusiness/2009/12/01/smb_ta_guitar_strings_daddario_lean.cnnmoney/&quot;&gt;Click here for the video at cnn.com.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The story says that the company, a guitar string maker called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.daddario.com/DaddarioHome.Page?ActiveID=1740&quot;&gt;D&#39;Addario&lt;/a&gt; in Long Island, has:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt;Cut inventory&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Streamlined the factory floor&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Installed new technology and&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Saved jobs&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt; &lt;p&gt;The owner says they made a committment in the 1970&#39;s that they would make the strings in America and they still have this committment. The owner and CEO, Jim D&#39;Addario says:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&quot;We do not want to lay people off because Lean has been effective. That&#39;s not going to help people embrace Lean. That&#39;s not really going to help our company or our community. What we do is take those people and train them to do something else.&quot;&lt;/blockquote&gt;That&#39;s classic Lean thinking, an approach that many hospitals are also taking, with their &quot;no layoffs due to Lean&quot; pledges. They&#39;ve helped create jobs for freed up staff by acquiring new lines of business (like guitar straps) and moving work FROM China.&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;An economist says in the piece:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Some manufacturing SHOULD be done in China. But too much manufacturing is being done in China that could be done more effectively in the United States.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/search?q=lean+blog+eve+yen&amp;amp;ie=utf-8&amp;amp;oe=utf-8&amp;amp;aq=t&amp;amp;rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&amp;amp;client=firefox-a&quot;&gt;Eve Yen and Diamond Wipes&lt;/a&gt; for an example of that strategy.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;CNN says they implemented a &quot;Toyota waste-reduction strategy&quot; known as Lean. As Steve pointed out, the voiceover incorrectly says that Lean &quot;relies heavily on automation.&quot;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The typical Toyota factory is actually LESS automated than a &quot;Detroit Three&quot; competitor.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In the video, I also see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.evansdrumheads.com/EvansHome.Page?ActiveID=1194&quot;&gt;Evans drum heads&lt;/a&gt; being made, which is exciting since I&#39;m a drummer and have Evans heads on my drum set at home.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;D&#39;Addario says:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I think people give up on manufacturing in America prematurely. It can be done.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Amen.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;center&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size:85%;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://feeds.feedburner.com/LeanBlog/&quot;&gt;Subscribe via RSS&lt;/a&gt;  | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanblog.org/&quot;&gt;Lean Blog Main Page&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanpodcast.org/&quot;&gt;Podcast&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.twitter.com/leanblog&quot;&gt;Twitter @leanblog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;blogger-post-footer&quot;&gt;Please check out my main blog page at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanblog.org/&quot;&gt;www.leanblog.org&lt;/a&gt;
  75.  
  76. The RSS feed content you are reading is copyrighted by the author, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.markgraban.com/&quot;&gt;Mark Graban&lt;/a&gt;.
  77.  
  78. If you are reading this material on a website other than leanblog.org, planetlean.org, amazon.com, or a BlogBurst partner, the web site is possibly infringing on the author&#39;s copyright.&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://kanban.blogspot.com/feeds/868288003239786787/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=7108456&amp;postID=868288003239786787&amp;isPopup=true' title='4 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7108456/posts/default/868288003239786787'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7108456/posts/default/868288003239786787'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://kanban.blogspot.com/2009/12/lean-as-way-to-save-manufacturing.html' title='Lean as a Way to Save Manufacturing Featured on CNN'/><author><name>Mark Graban</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/07953086531083611251</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='32' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBC2ewG5wv4khS_3UfhWPWJTxC8VjhzB-LzQ-hycIa9s7qg_LDUSinCqiS0sVKd1h3ByprNuKFeZWuxPbygutJOAcLTA8xs8QwvanwqxKvzHygpTqQhezljZo9VOi-uWU/s220/twitter3.png'/></author><thr:total>4</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7108456.post-1896430567388120135</id><published>2009-12-02T04:00:00.000-05:00</published><updated>2009-12-02T04:00:01.625-05:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Emiliani"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Healthcare"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="ThedaCare"/><title type='text'>Lean Healthcare Overview Article in CFO Mag</title><content type='html'>&lt;a onblur=&quot;try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}&quot; href=&quot;http://www.cfo.com/images/09DecCover.gif&quot;&gt;&lt;img style=&quot;margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 144px; height: 188px;&quot; src=&quot;http://www.cfo.com/images/09DecCover.gif&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; border=&quot;0&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cfo.com/article.cfm/14457598?f=singlepage&quot;&gt;Keen to Be Lean - CFO Magazine - December 2009 Issue - CFO.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&#39;ll share the above link with little commentary for now, a nice overview of Lean Healthcare for CFO Magazine. I helped the writer with research and ended up being quoted a few times. No misquoting, defect free!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;There are mentions of a number of great Lean organizations, including ThedaCare and Denver Health. Our friend Bob Emiliani was quoted, too.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I think the article did a nice job of focusing on quality, employee engagement, and not using Lean as a layoff-based cost-cutting strategy (surprising for a magazine for Chief Financial Officers?).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Thoughts on the article? Reactions?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;font-style: italic;&quot;&gt;p.s. I&#39;m teaching my &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lean.org/Workshops/WorkshopDescription.cfm?WorkshopId=37&quot;&gt;Key Concepts of Lean in Healthcare&lt;/a&gt; workshop today for the 2nd time after its debut in September. We will be holding it next in warm, sunny Miami on February 2nd and 3rd. Hope you can join us.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;center&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size:85%;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://feeds.feedburner.com/LeanBlog/&quot;&gt;Subscribe via RSS&lt;/a&gt;  | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanblog.org/&quot;&gt;Lean Blog Main Page&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanpodcast.org/&quot;&gt;Podcast&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.twitter.com/leanblog&quot;&gt;Twitter @leanblog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;blogger-post-footer&quot;&gt;Please check out my main blog page at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanblog.org/&quot;&gt;www.leanblog.org&lt;/a&gt;
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  82. If you are reading this material on a website other than leanblog.org, planetlean.org, amazon.com, or a BlogBurst partner, the web site is possibly infringing on the author&#39;s copyright.&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://kanban.blogspot.com/feeds/1896430567388120135/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=7108456&amp;postID=1896430567388120135&amp;isPopup=true' title='0 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7108456/posts/default/1896430567388120135'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7108456/posts/default/1896430567388120135'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://kanban.blogspot.com/2009/12/lean-healthcare-overview-article-in-cfo.html' title='Lean Healthcare Overview Article in CFO Mag'/><author><name>Mark Graban</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/07953086531083611251</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='32' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBC2ewG5wv4khS_3UfhWPWJTxC8VjhzB-LzQ-hycIa9s7qg_LDUSinCqiS0sVKd1h3ByprNuKFeZWuxPbygutJOAcLTA8xs8QwvanwqxKvzHygpTqQhezljZo9VOi-uWU/s220/twitter3.png'/></author><thr:total>0</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7108456.post-6176181211095961987</id><published>2009-12-01T04:00:00.004-05:00</published><updated>2009-12-01T04:00:03.194-05:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="A Lean Guy Reads"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Deming"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Error Proofing"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Safety"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="WSJ"/><title type='text'>A Lean Guy Reads the WSJ, Nov 30 Edition</title><content type='html'>&lt;div style=&quot;float: left; margin-right: 5px;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://view.picapp.com/default.aspx?term=wall%20street%20journal&amp;amp;iid=6916279&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;&lt;img style=&quot;width: 157px; height: 105px;&quot; src=&quot;http://cdn.picapp.com/ftp/Images/f/c/7/8/Decline_In_Daily_0b46.jpg?adImageId=7951772&amp;amp;imageId=6916279&quot; alt=&quot;Decline In Daily Newspaper Circulation Accelerates To 10.6 Percent In Q3&quot; border=&quot;0&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;script type=&quot;text/javascript&quot; src=&quot;http://cdn.pis.picapp.com/IamProd/PicAppPIS/JavaScript/PisV4.js&quot;&gt;&lt;/script&gt;Some days, it seems the WSJ is a treasure trove of tangentially Lean related articles. Similar to &quot;blog carnivals,&quot; this is sort of a WSJ carnival for 11/30/09. Some of the themes include real &quot;value&quot; versus the perception of it, leadership and incentives, outsourcing versus vertical integration, and error proofing.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I know this feature is of less value to those of you without WSJ subscriptions, but here goes:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a style=&quot;font-weight: bold;&quot; href=&quot;http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052970204488304574426521384198990.html#mod=todays_us_&quot;&gt;With budgets tight, more companies are hiring third parties to come up with new ideas - WSJ.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It&#39;s been trendy for decades (so it&#39;s not a passing fad) to blindly outsource manufacturing. Want to move everything to China for cheap labor? &lt;a href=&quot;http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052970203946904574302052610981892.html#mod=todays_us_&quot;&gt;This &lt;span style=&quot;font-weight: bold;&quot;&gt;WSJ article from today&lt;/span&gt; points out some possible pitfalls&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Seems nobody wants to build stuff anymore, it&#39;s not cool to make stuff (except for those getting back in &lt;a href=&quot;http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125954262100968855.html#mod=todays_us_page_one&quot;&gt;via &quot;vertical integration,&quot;&lt;span style=&quot;font-weight: bold;&quot;&gt; per this WSJ article from today&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;). But what now about companies also looking to outsource innovation?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;When should companies try to come up with new ideas themselves—and when should they give the job to outside experts?&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;It&#39;s a question many companies are facing these days. As budgets tighten, businesses are outsourcing research and development and the creation of new products as a way to slash costs, speed development time and tap into top talent outside the company.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;I guess we&#39;re getting closer to the executive ideal state -- just have a website and let the bonus checks roll in!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a style=&quot;font-weight: bold;&quot; href=&quot;http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052970203917304574414423182624140.html#mod%3Dtodays_us_%26articleTabs%3Darticle&quot;&gt;How Entrepreneurs Can Win Over Potential Investors - WSJ.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I really respect entrepreneurship, especially considering the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/archives/2009/11/startups_job_cr.html&quot;&gt;role that new companies play in creating jobs&lt;/a&gt;. How does a new company establish credibility with investors? Call me old fashioned, but you&#39;d think it would be your products, your market and customers, and your personal characteristics (the idea that investors invest in people being a popular notion).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;No, this WSJ article channels &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&amp;amp;safe=off&amp;amp;client=firefox-a&amp;amp;rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&amp;amp;hs=5IQ&amp;amp;q=billy+crystal+fernando&amp;amp;aq=f&amp;amp;oq=&amp;amp;aqi=g4g-m1&quot;&gt;Billy Crystal&#39;s &quot;Fernando&quot; character&lt;/a&gt; by saying it&#39;s basically better to look good than to feel good to investors.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Location, location, location.&lt;/strong&gt; The old adage also holds true here: Executives should secure the most desirable spot possible for their offices. Of course, not everyone can afford this, but there are ways to save. For instance, some entrepreneurs in our study arranged to meet in impressive surroundings—such as fancy hotels—or they rented shared offices in tony neighborhoods. Again, this serves a twofold purpose. Practically speaking, it&#39;s cheaper than getting very expensive digs. It also has valuable symbolic meaning. As one entrepreneur explained, &lt;span style=&quot;font-weight: bold;&quot;&gt;&quot;When we asked [our investors] why they had given us this chance, rather than some of our perhaps better-established competitors, they told us that they were so impressed that we were obviously a business of substance, because we had such a large, well-appointed office. They didn&#39;t know that we had a very, very small office, just in a large building.&quot;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;A fool and their money are soon parted, even if that fool&#39;s business card says &quot;Venture Capital.&quot; So much for creating value, let&#39;s just put up appearances. Blah.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a style=&quot;font-weight: bold;&quot; href=&quot;http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125952152870368561.html#mod=todays_us_page_one&quot;&gt;To Keep the Finger Out of Finger Food, Inventors Seek a Better Bagel Cutter - WSJ.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;BRI = Bagel Related Injuries, a major cause of sliced fingers and cut hands. This article details how people don&#39;t know how to use knives properly and they especially don&#39;t know how to cut bagels. Lack of standardized work and lack of training, apparently?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I got much more comfortable in the kitchen (I love to cook) when I learned a bit of proper knife technique (and knife sharpening technique especially, as a dull knife is a dangerous knife).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This article talks about devices to help &quot;error proof&quot; bagel cutting, including the &quot;bagel guillotine.&quot;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a style=&quot;font-weight: bold;&quot; href=&quot;http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748703294004574511223494536570.html#mod=todays_us_&quot;&gt;Get Rid of Executive Bonuses - WSJ.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;p&gt;Management expert &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Mintzberg&quot;&gt;Henry Mintzberg&lt;/a&gt; says bluntly:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;These days, it seems, there is no shortage of recommendations for fixing the way bonuses are paid to executives at big public companies.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Well, I have my own recommendation: Scrap the whole thing. &lt;span style=&quot;font-weight: bold;&quot;&gt;Don&#39;t pay any bonuses. Nothing.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;He says the process simply can&#39;t be fixed. Bonuses and the dysfunction created by them have dragged down the economy and caused more harm than good.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;The failings of the current system—and the executives who live by it—are painfully obvious. Although these executives like to think of themselves as leaders, when it comes to their pay practices, many of them haven&#39;t been demonstrating leadership at all. Instead they&#39;ve been acting like gamblers—except that the games they play are hopelessly rigged in their favor.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Mintzberg writes that even trying to tie incentives to the long-term is troublesome, because what measure do you use?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I love the idea that you use bonuses as a screening tool - Mintzberg writes that if the CEO candidate demands a bonus, you eliminate them from consideration. He writes:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;I believe that if you do pay bonuses, you get the &lt;em&gt;wrong&lt;/em&gt; person in that chair. &lt;span style=&quot;font-weight: bold;&quot;&gt;At the worst, you get a self-centered narcissist. At the best, you get someone who is willing to be singled out from everyone else by virtue of the compensation plan.&lt;/span&gt; Is this any way to build community within an enterprise, even to foster the very sense of enterprise that is so fundamental to economic strength?&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;It will be interesting to see what kinds of comments that column draws (seven as of this writing, early Monday evening). What are your thoughts on that topic or the others from yesterday&#39;s Journal?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;center&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size:85%;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://feeds.feedburner.com/LeanBlog/&quot;&gt;Subscribe via RSS&lt;/a&gt;  | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanblog.org/&quot;&gt;Lean Blog Main Page&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanpodcast.org/&quot;&gt;Podcast&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.twitter.com/leanblog&quot;&gt;Twitter @leanblog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;blogger-post-footer&quot;&gt;Please check out my main blog page at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanblog.org/&quot;&gt;www.leanblog.org&lt;/a&gt;
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  84. The RSS feed content you are reading is copyrighted by the author, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.markgraban.com/&quot;&gt;Mark Graban&lt;/a&gt;.
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  86. If you are reading this material on a website other than leanblog.org, planetlean.org, amazon.com, or a BlogBurst partner, the web site is possibly infringing on the author&#39;s copyright.&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://kanban.blogspot.com/feeds/6176181211095961987/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=7108456&amp;postID=6176181211095961987&amp;isPopup=true' title='3 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7108456/posts/default/6176181211095961987'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7108456/posts/default/6176181211095961987'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://kanban.blogspot.com/2009/12/lean-guy-reads-wsj-nov-30-edition.html' title='A Lean Guy Reads the WSJ, Nov 30 Edition'/><author><name>Mark Graban</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/07953086531083611251</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='32' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBC2ewG5wv4khS_3UfhWPWJTxC8VjhzB-LzQ-hycIa9s7qg_LDUSinCqiS0sVKd1h3ByprNuKFeZWuxPbygutJOAcLTA8xs8QwvanwqxKvzHygpTqQhezljZo9VOi-uWU/s220/twitter3.png'/></author><thr:total>3</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7108456.post-2813644773474150185</id><published>2009-11-30T12:00:00.000-05:00</published><updated>2009-12-11T00:00:14.385-05:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Error Proofing"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Healthcare"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="LEI"/><title type='text'>TODAY - Free Webinar: Mistake-Proofing to Reduce Medical Errors</title><content type='html'>&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lean.org/Events/dec_webinar.cfm&quot;&gt;Mistake Proofing Webinar&lt;/a&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&#39;m producing a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lean.org/Events/dec_webinar.cfm&quot;&gt;free webinar through LEI on Mistake-Proofing to Reduce Medical Errors&lt;/a&gt;. This will be given on December 10th by Prof. John Grout of Berry College and the outstanding &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mistakeproofing.com/&quot;&gt;mistakeproofing.com &lt;/a&gt;website. I hope you&#39;ll register and check it out.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;John&#39;s book Mistake-Proofing the Design of Healthcare Processes was published by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality as a government document that is distributed free to the public and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ahrq.gov/qual/mistakeproof/mistakeproofing.pdf&quot;&gt;can be downloaded here&lt;/a&gt;. In 2004, John received the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.shingoprize.org/&quot;&gt;Shingo Prize&lt;/a&gt; for his paper, &quot;The Human Side of Mistake-Proofing,&quot; with Douglas Stewart.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;center&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size:85%;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://feeds.feedburner.com/LeanBlog/&quot;&gt;Subscribe via RSS&lt;/a&gt;  | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanblog.org/&quot;&gt;Lean Blog Main Page&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanpodcast.org/&quot;&gt;Podcast&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.twitter.com/leanblog&quot;&gt;Twitter @leanblog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;blogger-post-footer&quot;&gt;Please check out my main blog page at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanblog.org/&quot;&gt;www.leanblog.org&lt;/a&gt;
  87.  
  88. The RSS feed content you are reading is copyrighted by the author, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.markgraban.com/&quot;&gt;Mark Graban&lt;/a&gt;.
  89.  
  90. If you are reading this material on a website other than leanblog.org, planetlean.org, amazon.com, or a BlogBurst partner, the web site is possibly infringing on the author&#39;s copyright.&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://kanban.blogspot.com/feeds/2813644773474150185/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=7108456&amp;postID=2813644773474150185&amp;isPopup=true' title='1 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7108456/posts/default/2813644773474150185'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7108456/posts/default/2813644773474150185'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://kanban.blogspot.com/2009/11/free-webinar-mistake-proofing-to-reduce.html' title='TODAY - Free Webinar: Mistake-Proofing to Reduce Medical Errors'/><author><name>Mark Graban</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/07953086531083611251</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='32' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBC2ewG5wv4khS_3UfhWPWJTxC8VjhzB-LzQ-hycIa9s7qg_LDUSinCqiS0sVKd1h3ByprNuKFeZWuxPbygutJOAcLTA8xs8QwvanwqxKvzHygpTqQhezljZo9VOi-uWU/s220/twitter3.png'/></author><thr:total>1</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7108456.post-7574134711670073697</id><published>2009-11-30T04:00:00.006-05:00</published><updated>2009-11-30T06:48:11.536-05:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Bodek"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Healthcare"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Kaizen"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Respect for People"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Standard Work"/><title type='text'>Hospitals Saving Millions with Staff Suggestions</title><content type='html'>&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://view.picapp.com/default.aspx?term=hospital%20team%20nurse&amp;amp;iid=1275934&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;&lt;img style=&quot;width: 397px; height: 265px;&quot; src=&quot;http://cdn.picapp.com/ftp/Images/8/0/e/e/Inside_The_ICU_f7bb.jpg?adImageId=7939480&amp;amp;imageId=1275934&quot; alt=&quot;Inside The ICU&quot; border=&quot;0&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;script type=&quot;text/javascript&quot; src=&quot;http://cdn.pis.picapp.com/IamProd/PicAppPIS/JavaScript/PisV4.js&quot;&gt;&lt;/script&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;In the past week, I found two articles about hospitals that are engaging staff members through suggestion programs.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Employee suggestions are a core part of Lean and the Toyota Production System. There&#39;s so much wasted potential when hospitals don&#39;t get people engaged in improving their work and improving processes. This is wasted potential in terms of patient care not being better and hospitals not saving money, but also wasted potential in terms of not letting people feel good about improving their workplace (an example of the &quot;waste of human potential&quot; that&#39;s often talked about as one of the &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epa.gov/lean/thinking/types.htm&quot;&gt;Eight Types of Waste&lt;/a&gt;.&quot;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&#39;ve heard staff members at many hospitals complain that they&#39;re expected to just show up and do their job -- don&#39;t try to make things better, don&#39;t make waves, or you might get branded a &quot;troublemaker.&quot; Sad.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Toyota teaches their employees they have two jobs:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;ol&gt;&lt;li&gt;Do their work (follow the standardized work)&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Improve their work (&quot;kaizen&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ol&gt;Do hospital staff and physicians have the same expectation? When you are expected to help improve how work is done, that&#39;s your outlet for creativity and problem solving, even if your work is being done in a more standardized way. Let&#39;s not be creative in figuring out how to insert a central line -- let&#39;s do it in a standardized way and be creative in finding ways that work better and lead to further reductions of infections.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;From Kansas:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mlive.com/newsflash/health/index.ssf?/base/national-80/1259281328238440.xml&amp;amp;storylist=health&quot;&gt;Staff ideas save money at Newton hospital - NewsFlash - mlive.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;A Newton hospital has been recognized for cutting costs after a series of staff suggestions helped save the facility $1.7 million over the past year.&lt;/blockquote&gt;The baseline number that Norman Bodek often cites for companies like Toyota or Canon is that the company saves $4,000 per employee based on employee kaizen suggestions.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;If you have a hospital of 2,000 employees -- that&#39;s $8 million a year in savings.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The article doesn&#39;t mention Lean, but Newton Medical Center has the right idea about how to encourage suggestions:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;Hospital spokesman Barrick Wilson said the ideas allowed them to save money, protect patient care and &lt;span style=&quot;font-weight: bold;&quot;&gt;&quot;protect the integrity of the work force by not having to have any layoffs.&quot;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;No layoff pledges or no layoff philosophies are becoming more common in the Lean healthcare movement. This is critical - if kaizen leads to layoffs, who would participate?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;Gleason said hospital staff submitted 121 ideas and officials used 62 of those, some quickly and others as the year progressed.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;That&#39;s a 50 percent implementation rate. Toyota often gets cited as having a 90%+ rate -- not that every suggestion is necessarily implementable, but the submitted suggestion is the starting point for a discussion between staffer and supervisor. If you define the problem (and not just make a suggestion), you can talk about alternatives and find SOMETHING to implement, even if it wasn&#39;t the original idea.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;The ideas included surgeons and operating room staff reviewing the supplies routinely kept on hand and finding they were wasting several thousand dollars with redundant items.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Gleason said other workers suggested switching to cheaper alternatives of products the hospital used. &lt;span style=&quot;font-weight: bold;&quot;&gt;Some of those changes saved only a few hundred dollars but others saved thousands.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;Lots of little ideas -- they don&#39;t all have to be a million dollar idea. We tend to focus too much on finding a few small ideas with HUGE cost savings. I&#39;m sure there are more than 121 ideas... $1.7 million savings sounds great, but why didn&#39;t they get more than 121? Was the systemic too bureaucratic?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;From Ontario, Canada:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.therecord.com/News/Local/article/635518&quot;&gt;TheRecord.com - Local - Cambridge hospital wants to cut 85 workers, but says care won’t suffer&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This article DOES mention Lean specifically. And they also have a &quot;no layoffs due to lean&quot; committment, although they are looking to reduce 85 positions through attrition (not backfilling). The hospital is losing millions -- they have to choice but to find cost savings. What better way than asking the staff?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;Cambridge Memorial’s workers are eager to &lt;span style=&quot;font-weight: bold;&quot;&gt;offer cost-saving ideas while maintaining — and improving — patient care,&lt;/span&gt; Martin said. More than 200 ideas have been received; many have already been adopted to allow the hospital to face a freeze in provincial funding at the same time facing increased staff costs from union contracts and operating expenses.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Martin was adamant care will not suffer at Cambridge Memorial. In fact, he said the staff-inspired ideas will improve care throughout the hospital.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;“I think the community should be very pleased with what the (hospital improvement plan) has accomplished,” Martin said.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Hospitals are late to the cost-saving, “lean-process’’ mindset that private industry long ago adopted to operate more efficiently, Martin said.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-weight: bold;&quot;&gt;Staff offered more than 200 ideas since September that helped find $3 million in annual savings. &lt;/span&gt;These include work-schedule changes, smarter ways to offer care, and more efficient ordering of supplies.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;Protecting staff members is key. Also important is making sure that you&#39;re eliminating waste, not just blindly slashing costs in ways that negatively impact patient care. Finding ways to improve quality will lead to cost savings.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;How are things at your hospital? Are you encouraged to submit and help implement ideas? How is this working for you?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;center&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size:85%;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://feeds.feedburner.com/LeanBlog/&quot;&gt;Subscribe via RSS&lt;/a&gt;  | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanblog.org/&quot;&gt;Lean Blog Main Page&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanpodcast.org/&quot;&gt;Podcast&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.twitter.com/leanblog&quot;&gt;Twitter @leanblog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;blogger-post-footer&quot;&gt;Please check out my main blog page at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanblog.org/&quot;&gt;www.leanblog.org&lt;/a&gt;
  91.  
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  94. If you are reading this material on a website other than leanblog.org, planetlean.org, amazon.com, or a BlogBurst partner, the web site is possibly infringing on the author&#39;s copyright.&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://kanban.blogspot.com/feeds/7574134711670073697/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=7108456&amp;postID=7574134711670073697&amp;isPopup=true' title='4 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7108456/posts/default/7574134711670073697'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7108456/posts/default/7574134711670073697'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://kanban.blogspot.com/2009/11/hospitals-saving-millions-with-staff.html' title='Hospitals Saving Millions with Staff Suggestions'/><author><name>Mark Graban</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/07953086531083611251</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='32' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBC2ewG5wv4khS_3UfhWPWJTxC8VjhzB-LzQ-hycIa9s7qg_LDUSinCqiS0sVKd1h3ByprNuKFeZWuxPbygutJOAcLTA8xs8QwvanwqxKvzHygpTqQhezljZo9VOi-uWU/s220/twitter3.png'/></author><thr:total>4</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7108456.post-2445545956757500685</id><published>2009-11-29T04:00:00.000-05:00</published><updated>2009-11-29T04:00:02.310-05:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Deming"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Healthcare"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Standard Work"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Value Stream Mapping"/><title type='text'>Cleveland Clinic and Lean Healthcare in Newsweek</title><content type='html'>&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newsweek.com/id/224585&quot;&gt;What Health Reform Can Learn From Cleveland Clinic | Newsweek Health | Newsweek.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Although it&#39;s not the primary focus of the article, Lean gets a mention early in the article:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;A century after Henry Ford began building cars on an assembly line, Cleveland Clinic has brought that technique to medicine, updated to reflect the latest &lt;span style=&quot;font-weight: bold;&quot;&gt;Japanese-inspired thinking on &quot;lean manufacturing&quot; and &quot;continuous-cycle improvement.&quot; Cleveland Clinic is a hospital trying to be a Toyota factory.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;It&#39;s nice to have the mention in Newsweek, but I worry there will be misperceptions:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;ol&gt;&lt;li&gt;Can we please get past the idea that Lean is &quot;Japanese&quot;? Toyota learned from Henry Ford and Dr. Deming and others. Toyota has been successful with its management system around the world. Not all Japanese manage like Toyota.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;I don&#39;t like the notion that Cleveland Clinic is trying to be like a Toyota factory -- at least the common notion of &quot;assembly line medicine.&quot; If they are trying to be like Toyota in the sense that they build quality into the process and everyone is involved in kaizen, then the simile is fine to me.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ol&gt;The article states that Cleveland Clinic is using multiple improvement methods and that&#39;s great -- it doesn&#39;t have to be &quot;Lean or nothing.&quot; Whatever leads to sustainable improvement:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;In his efforts to improve the efficiency of medical care, Cleveland Clinic president and CEO Dr. Delos M. Cosgrove, a former cardiac surgeon, &lt;span style=&quot;font-weight: bold;&quot;&gt;has enlisted every tool of modern management,&lt;/span&gt; obsessively tracking metrics of performance from blood-bank usage to market share, even redesigning hospital gowns in an initiative to &quot;improve the patient experience.&quot;&lt;/blockquote&gt;And results are what they get:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;The evidence was in the 2008 &lt;em&gt;Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care&lt;/em&gt;, which reported that of the five medical centers ranked best by &lt;em&gt;U.S. News&lt;/em&gt; in 2007, Cleveland Clinic provided the most cost-efficient care, measured by expenses incurred during the last two years of life—$31,252, &lt;span style=&quot;font-weight: bold;&quot;&gt;nearly 50 percent below the most expensive.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;Many aspects of the Cleveland Clinic approach are covered including the fact that doctors are salaried -- I think Dr. Deming would approve that they aren&#39;t be paid on a piecework system. Incentives to provide the best patient care at the lowest cost have to be better aligned.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;A longer discussion of using Value Stream Mapping to improve a process and reduce waiting time:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;Cosgrove established a department called Strategic Planning and Continuous Improvement with 50 employees, headed by Darryl Greene, a systems engineer with experience in appliance manufacturing. Here is how Greene and chief medical operations officer Dr. A. Marc Harrison approached the problem of managing patients on blood-thinning drugs. These patients have a variety of underlying conditions, but they all face the same problem, Greene says, &quot;that you don&#39;t want them to bleed to death, and you don&#39;t want them to clot, either.&quot; So the clinic created a unit just to manage their anti-coagulant levels, but it quickly had more patients than it could handle. By analyzing the steps involved in a visit and assessing their contributions to patient care, a process Greene calls &quot;&lt;span style=&quot;font-weight: bold;&quot;&gt;mapping the value stream&lt;/span&gt;,&quot; his team cut the standard visit from 30 to 15 minutes. Doctors were giving the same introductory talk to every patient who came in, so they made it into a DVD instead. &lt;/blockquote&gt;The DVD... sounds like an example of &quot;standardized work&quot; in classic Lean thinking. I wonder how the patients respond to being given a DVD... you can&#39;t ask questions of a DVD, so I&#39;d assume (or hope) that they provide that opportunity.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;center&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size:85%;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://feeds.feedburner.com/LeanBlog/&quot;&gt;Subscribe via RSS&lt;/a&gt;  | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanblog.org/&quot;&gt;Lean Blog Main Page&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanpodcast.org/&quot;&gt;Podcast&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.twitter.com/leanblog&quot;&gt;Twitter @leanblog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;blogger-post-footer&quot;&gt;Please check out my main blog page at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanblog.org/&quot;&gt;www.leanblog.org&lt;/a&gt;
  95.  
  96. The RSS feed content you are reading is copyrighted by the author, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.markgraban.com/&quot;&gt;Mark Graban&lt;/a&gt;.
  97.  
  98. If you are reading this material on a website other than leanblog.org, planetlean.org, amazon.com, or a BlogBurst partner, the web site is possibly infringing on the author&#39;s copyright.&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://kanban.blogspot.com/feeds/2445545956757500685/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=7108456&amp;postID=2445545956757500685&amp;isPopup=true' title='0 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7108456/posts/default/2445545956757500685'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7108456/posts/default/2445545956757500685'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://kanban.blogspot.com/2009/11/cleveland-clinic-and-lean-healthcare-in.html' title='Cleveland Clinic and Lean Healthcare in Newsweek'/><author><name>Mark Graban</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/07953086531083611251</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='32' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBC2ewG5wv4khS_3UfhWPWJTxC8VjhzB-LzQ-hycIa9s7qg_LDUSinCqiS0sVKd1h3ByprNuKFeZWuxPbygutJOAcLTA8xs8QwvanwqxKvzHygpTqQhezljZo9VOi-uWU/s220/twitter3.png'/></author><thr:total>0</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7108456.post-4702291785700549095</id><published>2009-11-28T18:38:00.004-05:00</published><updated>2009-11-28T19:22:56.128-05:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Healthcare"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Video"/><title type='text'>Breast Cancer Awareness Video</title><content type='html'>&lt;p&gt;Some off-topic non-Lean related weekend fun, this video promoting breast cancer awareness:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;object width=&quot;400&quot; height=&quot;324&quot;&gt;&lt;param name=&quot;movie&quot; value=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/v/OEdVfyt-mLw&amp;amp;color1=0xb1b1b1&amp;amp;color2=0xcfcfcf&amp;amp;hl=en_US&amp;amp;feature=player_embedded&amp;amp;fs=1&quot;&gt;&lt;param name=&quot;allowFullScreen&quot; value=&quot;true&quot;&gt;&lt;param name=&quot;allowScriptAccess&quot; value=&quot;always&quot;&gt;&lt;embed src=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/v/OEdVfyt-mLw&amp;amp;color1=0xb1b1b1&amp;amp;color2=0xcfcfcf&amp;amp;hl=en_US&amp;amp;feature=player_embedded&amp;amp;fs=1&quot; type=&quot;application/x-shockwave-flash&quot; allowfullscreen=&quot;true&quot; allowscriptaccess=&quot;always&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; height=&quot;324&quot;&gt;&lt;/embed&gt;&lt;/object&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;As the ever helpful &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/charity/pinkglove.asp&quot;&gt;snopes.com page&lt;/a&gt; points out -- yes, Medline does donate a percentage of the sale of pink gloves to breast cancer awareness, but no, they will not be making a donation based on the video getting 1 million hits.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Either way, it&#39;s a fun video from Providence St. Vincent Medical Center in Portland, OR.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Something to give thanks for - their creativity.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;To make a donation to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.komen.org/&quot;&gt;Susan G. Komen Foundation, click here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;center&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size:85%;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://feeds.feedburner.com/LeanBlog/&quot;&gt;Subscribe via RSS&lt;/a&gt;  | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanblog.org/&quot;&gt;Lean Blog Main Page&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanpodcast.org/&quot;&gt;Podcast&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.twitter.com/leanblog&quot;&gt;Twitter @leanblog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;blogger-post-footer&quot;&gt;Please check out my main blog page at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanblog.org/&quot;&gt;www.leanblog.org&lt;/a&gt;
  99.  
  100. The RSS feed content you are reading is copyrighted by the author, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.markgraban.com/&quot;&gt;Mark Graban&lt;/a&gt;.
  101.  
  102. If you are reading this material on a website other than leanblog.org, planetlean.org, amazon.com, or a BlogBurst partner, the web site is possibly infringing on the author&#39;s copyright.&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://kanban.blogspot.com/feeds/4702291785700549095/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=7108456&amp;postID=4702291785700549095&amp;isPopup=true' title='0 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7108456/posts/default/4702291785700549095'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7108456/posts/default/4702291785700549095'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://kanban.blogspot.com/2009/11/breast-cancer-awareness-video.html' title='Breast Cancer Awareness Video'/><author><name>Mark Graban</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/07953086531083611251</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='32' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBC2ewG5wv4khS_3UfhWPWJTxC8VjhzB-LzQ-hycIa9s7qg_LDUSinCqiS0sVKd1h3ByprNuKFeZWuxPbygutJOAcLTA8xs8QwvanwqxKvzHygpTqQhezljZo9VOi-uWU/s220/twitter3.png'/></author><thr:total>0</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7108456.post-4611258846959668583</id><published>2009-11-26T04:00:00.000-05:00</published><updated>2009-11-26T04:00:02.876-05:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Healthcare"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Leadership"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Studer"/><title type='text'>How to Show Gratitute in Your Organization</title><content type='html'>&lt;div style=&quot;float:left;margin-right:5px;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://view.picapp.com/default.aspx?term=thanksgiving%20turkey&amp;amp;iid=7116954&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://cdn.picapp.com/ftp/Images/f/3/e/a/wine_turkey_e476.JPG?adImageId=7839320&amp;amp;imageId=7116954&quot; width=&quot;117&quot; height=&quot;175.5&quot; border=&quot;0&quot; alt=&quot;wine turkey&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;script type=&quot;text/javascript&quot; src=&quot;http://cdn.pis.picapp.com/IamProd/PicAppPIS/JavaScript/PisV4.js&quot;&gt;&lt;/script&gt;Some great thoughts for Thanksgiving Day from Quint Studer, ideas that could apply to any organization, not just in healthcare.&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://quintsblog.wordpress.com/2009/11/25/the-grateful-workplace-six-ways-to-create-a-culture-of-gratitude-in-your-organization/&quot;&gt;Quint&#39;s Blog: The Grateful Workplace: Six Ways to Create a Culture of Gratitude in Your Organization&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;His post begins:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;Here’s a question just in time for Thanksgiving: Does your organization encourage a culture of gratitude? Not in an obligatory, “Gee, I really appreciate my coworkers and the feeling is mutual!” way? Chances are the answer is no. According to a recent Gallup poll, 65 percent of people say they don’t feel appreciated at work. And, that feeling can lead to pervasive negativity, low morale, and (worst of all) decreased productivity.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It doesn’t have to be this way.&lt;/blockquote&gt;Read Quint&#39;s blog for some practical tips for how to create an &quot;attitude of gratitude&quot; in your workplace. Imagine how morale, quality, and customer service would improve in this type of environment...&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Happy Thanksgiving.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;center&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size:85%;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://feeds.feedburner.com/LeanBlog/&quot;&gt;Subscribe via RSS&lt;/a&gt;  | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanblog.org/&quot;&gt;Lean Blog Main Page&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanpodcast.org/&quot;&gt;Podcast&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.twitter.com/leanblog&quot;&gt;Twitter @leanblog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;blogger-post-footer&quot;&gt;Please check out my main blog page at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanblog.org/&quot;&gt;www.leanblog.org&lt;/a&gt;
  103.  
  104. The RSS feed content you are reading is copyrighted by the author, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.markgraban.com/&quot;&gt;Mark Graban&lt;/a&gt;.
  105.  
  106. If you are reading this material on a website other than leanblog.org, planetlean.org, amazon.com, or a BlogBurst partner, the web site is possibly infringing on the author&#39;s copyright.&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://kanban.blogspot.com/feeds/4611258846959668583/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=7108456&amp;postID=4611258846959668583&amp;isPopup=true' title='0 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7108456/posts/default/4611258846959668583'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7108456/posts/default/4611258846959668583'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://kanban.blogspot.com/2009/11/how-to-show-gratitute-in-your.html' title='How to Show Gratitute in Your Organization'/><author><name>Mark Graban</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/07953086531083611251</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='32' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBC2ewG5wv4khS_3UfhWPWJTxC8VjhzB-LzQ-hycIa9s7qg_LDUSinCqiS0sVKd1h3ByprNuKFeZWuxPbygutJOAcLTA8xs8QwvanwqxKvzHygpTqQhezljZo9VOi-uWU/s220/twitter3.png'/></author><thr:total>0</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7108456.post-1694473045609441127</id><published>2009-11-25T12:00:00.007-05:00</published><updated>2009-11-25T13:31:30.512-05:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Bodek"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Gemba"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Leadership"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Video"/><title type='text'>Happy Thanksgiving from WKRP</title><content type='html'>As Thanksgiving approaches, a friend recommended re-watching the classic WKRP in Cincinnati &quot;Turkey Drop&quot; episode (the full episode &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hulu.com/watch/322/wkrp-in-cincinnati-turkeys-away&quot;&gt;is available via Hulu)&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Early in the episode, there&#39;s a little scene where the station manager, Mr. Carlson, asks Les Nessman, the news director, how things are going.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Nessman&#39;s somewhat fearful response reminds me of the old Toyota story about the Japanese executives responding to the new American managers &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=r92d9xVvsXkC&amp;amp;pg=PT53&amp;amp;lpg=PT53&amp;amp;dq=%22no+problems+is+a+problem%22&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=29qT1_T5hS&amp;amp;sig=35OisAWJjnsudCWd_4Vb4635Xbk&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ei=23cNS7C8LYGknQevmfDGAw&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;oi=book_result&amp;amp;ct=result&amp;amp;resnum=3&amp;amp;ved=0CA4Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=%22no%20problems%20is%20a%20problem%22&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;no problems is a problem&lt;/a&gt;&quot; early in the days of the Toyota Motor Manufacturing Kentucky plant.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;object height=&quot;266&quot; width=&quot;400&quot;&gt;&lt;param name=&quot;movie&quot; value=&quot;http://www.hulu.com/embed/ARGH13THKHoYcvgLRNOP6Q/150/180/i166&quot;&gt;&lt;param name=&quot;allowFullScreen&quot; value=&quot;true&quot;&gt;&lt;embed src=&quot;http://www.hulu.com/embed/ARGH13THKHoYcvgLRNOP6Q/150/180/i166&quot; type=&quot;application/x-shockwave-flash&quot; allowfullscreen=&quot;true&quot; height=&quot;266&quot; width=&quot;400&quot;&gt;&lt;/embed&gt;&lt;/object&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;That video clip seems to set up that story perfectly... and it *is* Thanksgiving tomorrow. To Mr. Carlson&#39;s credit, later on, he does get a bit frustrated at how everyone is just saying &quot;no problems.&quot;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Ha, and this clip seems to perfectly illustrate a bad attempt at a &quot;gemba walk&quot; where a bored Mr. Carlson is wandering around the station, awkwardly interacting with people, and giving clueless advice. As an alternative, read &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanlibrary.com/gemba_walk.htm&quot;&gt;Norman Bodek&#39;s piece on effective gemba walks&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;object height=&quot;266&quot; width=&quot;400&quot;&gt;&lt;param name=&quot;movie&quot; value=&quot;http://www.hulu.com/embed/ARGH13THKHoYcvgLRNOP6Q/234/328/i285&quot;&gt;&lt;param name=&quot;allowFullScreen&quot; value=&quot;true&quot;&gt;&lt;embed src=&quot;http://www.hulu.com/embed/ARGH13THKHoYcvgLRNOP6Q/234/328/i285&quot; type=&quot;application/x-shockwave-flash&quot; allowfullscreen=&quot;true&quot; height=&quot;266&quot; width=&quot;400&quot;&gt;&lt;/embed&gt;&lt;/object&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;There&#39;s also a scene with a funny discussion about the role of management... &quot;what *do* I do here?&quot; asks Mr. Carlson:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;object width=&quot;400&quot; height=&quot;266&quot;&gt;&lt;param name=&quot;movie&quot; value=&quot;http://www.hulu.com/embed/ARGH13THKHoYcvgLRNOP6Q/410/1458/i499&quot;&gt;&lt;param name=&quot;allowFullScreen&quot; value=&quot;true&quot;&gt;&lt;embed src=&quot;http://www.hulu.com/embed/ARGH13THKHoYcvgLRNOP6Q/410/1458/i499&quot; type=&quot;application/x-shockwave-flash&quot; allowfullscreen=&quot;true&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; height=&quot;266&quot;&gt;&lt;/embed&gt;&lt;/object&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The staff all then complain that Mr. Carlson&#39;s getting in the way and driving them crazy with his suggestions, including the infamous turkey drop! The turkey drop is a great argument for doing tests and getting input from others and not just running with one person&#39;s idea... PDCA...&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&quot;With God as my witness... I thought turkeys could fly...&quot; says Mr. Carlson to end the episode.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;With that, I&#39;ll probably take a few days off from blogging. Enjoy the rest of the week.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;center&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size:85%;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://feeds.feedburner.com/LeanBlog/&quot;&gt;Subscribe via RSS&lt;/a&gt;  | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanblog.org/&quot;&gt;Lean Blog Main Page&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanpodcast.org/&quot;&gt;Podcast&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.twitter.com/leanblog&quot;&gt;Twitter @leanblog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;blogger-post-footer&quot;&gt;Please check out my main blog page at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanblog.org/&quot;&gt;www.leanblog.org&lt;/a&gt;
  107.  
  108. The RSS feed content you are reading is copyrighted by the author, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.markgraban.com/&quot;&gt;Mark Graban&lt;/a&gt;.
  109.  
  110. If you are reading this material on a website other than leanblog.org, planetlean.org, amazon.com, or a BlogBurst partner, the web site is possibly infringing on the author&#39;s copyright.&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://kanban.blogspot.com/feeds/1694473045609441127/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=7108456&amp;postID=1694473045609441127&amp;isPopup=true' title='0 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7108456/posts/default/1694473045609441127'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7108456/posts/default/1694473045609441127'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://kanban.blogspot.com/2009/11/happy-thanksgiving-from-wkrp.html' title='Happy Thanksgiving from WKRP'/><author><name>Mark Graban</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/07953086531083611251</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='32' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBC2ewG5wv4khS_3UfhWPWJTxC8VjhzB-LzQ-hycIa9s7qg_LDUSinCqiS0sVKd1h3ByprNuKFeZWuxPbygutJOAcLTA8xs8QwvanwqxKvzHygpTqQhezljZo9VOi-uWU/s220/twitter3.png'/></author><thr:total>0</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7108456.post-3254972801438193957</id><published>2009-11-25T04:00:00.000-05:00</published><updated>2009-11-25T08:14:49.482-05:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Healthcare"/><title type='text'>Upcoming Lean Healthcare Discussion in R.I. Dec 1</title><content type='html'>&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vibco.com/content/event-lean_healthcare_12_01_09.php&quot;&gt;VIBCO VIBRATORS: VIBCO Vibrators Lean Healthcare Discussion on December 1, 2009&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Come join me and our hosts from VIBCO if you&#39;re in the Rhode Island area on December 1. I&#39;ll be driving down from Boston to participate in the discussion. VIBCO is a manufacturer that has embraced the Lean methodology and wants to share that with others.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Many of the leading Lean healthcare examples (such as ThedaCare and Virgina Mason Medical Center) have close ties to the influence of local manufacturers. So there&#39;s definitely something for medical professionals or healthcare organizations to learn from this session.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;From their website:&lt;br /&gt;       &lt;!--  * * * * *   content START  * * * * *   --&gt;      &lt;h2&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;h2&gt;Lean Healthcare Event on December 1, 2009&lt;/h2&gt;   &lt;p&gt;&lt;a bitly=&quot;BITLY_PROCESSED&quot; href=&quot;mailto:lindak@vibco.com?subject=Lean_Healthcare_Discussion&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Register for this event&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;      &lt;h3&gt;Improve the Patient Experience... Increase access to care... Achieve better clinical outcomes... Emphasize work-life balance for healthcare workers... Reduce costs for providers and patients.&lt;/h3&gt;       &lt;p&gt; Join us on Tuesday, December 1 from 3:30pm - 5:30pm at VIBCO Vibrators headquarters in Richmond, RI to see how manufacturing principles can improve healthcare. The event includes a plant tour and honest discussion of Lean Healthcare&#39;s potential. &lt;a bitly=&quot;BITLY_PROCESSED&quot; href=&quot;mailto:lindak@vibco.com?subject=Lean_Healthcare_Discussion&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Register Now&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;    &lt;p&gt; Amidst the passion surrounding the healthcare reform debate and so much focus on the &quot;big picture&quot;, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that the most impactful solutions and greatest gains will not come from Washington, D.C. They will come from you... from us... from a healthcare community that cares deeply about patients and desperately wants to improve access to services and better outcomes for all.&lt;/p&gt;    &lt;p&gt; The answer is simple. We must eliminate waste. We must continually shrink the percentage of non-value-added activities and create better, more usable processes that enable caregivers to focus on the real work of providing the highest quality care possible.&lt;br /&gt;         &lt;a bitly=&quot;BITLY_PROCESSED&quot; href=&quot;mailto:lindak@vibco.com?subject=Lean_Healthcare_Discussion&quot;&gt;Learn more... register for the December 1st meeting now.   &lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a bitly=&quot;BITLY_PROCESSED&quot; href=&quot;mailto:lindak@vibco.com?subject=Lean_Healthcare_Discussion&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I hope to see you there.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;center&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size:85%;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://feeds.feedburner.com/LeanBlog/&quot;&gt;Subscribe via RSS&lt;/a&gt;  | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanblog.org/&quot;&gt;Lean Blog Main Page&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanpodcast.org/&quot;&gt;Podcast&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.twitter.com/leanblog&quot;&gt;Twitter @leanblog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;blogger-post-footer&quot;&gt;Please check out my main blog page at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanblog.org/&quot;&gt;www.leanblog.org&lt;/a&gt;
  111.  
  112. The RSS feed content you are reading is copyrighted by the author, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.markgraban.com/&quot;&gt;Mark Graban&lt;/a&gt;.
  113.  
  114. If you are reading this material on a website other than leanblog.org, planetlean.org, amazon.com, or a BlogBurst partner, the web site is possibly infringing on the author&#39;s copyright.&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://kanban.blogspot.com/feeds/3254972801438193957/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=7108456&amp;postID=3254972801438193957&amp;isPopup=true' title='0 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7108456/posts/default/3254972801438193957'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7108456/posts/default/3254972801438193957'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://kanban.blogspot.com/2009/11/upcoming-lean-healthcare-discussion-in.html' title='Upcoming Lean Healthcare Discussion in R.I. Dec 1'/><author><name>Mark Graban</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/07953086531083611251</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='32' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBC2ewG5wv4khS_3UfhWPWJTxC8VjhzB-LzQ-hycIa9s7qg_LDUSinCqiS0sVKd1h3ByprNuKFeZWuxPbygutJOAcLTA8xs8QwvanwqxKvzHygpTqQhezljZo9VOi-uWU/s220/twitter3.png'/></author><thr:total>0</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7108456.post-922866936360796691</id><published>2009-11-24T13:00:00.001-05:00</published><updated>2009-11-24T13:00:02.493-05:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Doctor"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Healthcare"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Lean Dentist"/><title type='text'>Lean Healthcare in Jacksonville</title><content type='html'>&lt;a href=&quot;http://jacksonville.bizjournals.com/jacksonville/stories/2009/11/23/daily6.html&quot;&gt;NE Fla. health care providers cut waste - Jacksonville Business Journal:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Here&#39;s a nice upbeat article about some lean healthcare progress in Jacksonville, including our good friend, Dr. Sami Bahri, the &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanblog.org/search/label/Lean%20Dentist&quot;&gt;World&#39;s First Lean Dentist&lt;/a&gt;.&quot;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I like the intro of the article:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;Doing a job inefficiently out of habit is a pain for almost all businesses, and health care is no exception. But lean principles are turning up in your dentist’s office and hospital emergency rooms.&lt;/blockquote&gt;It then highlights how &quot;common sense&quot; helps eliminate waste for the benefit of patients (less waiting time, fewer errors, and money saved). This is done with the heavy involvement of front-line staff, utilizing their ideas and creativity.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;There are some improvements at the different organizations, including:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt;Reduced patient waiting time&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Increased patient throughput&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Reduction in supply expenses&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Improving lab turnaround time&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Reducing construction costs&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Reduced over-ordering of IVs (eliminating the waste of throwing away the excess).&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;That last example saved $500,000 in one year at Baptist Health. Impressive. Jacksonville is quite a lean city, with their &lt;a href=&quot;http://leanjax.org/&quot;&gt;Jacksonville Lean Consortium&lt;/a&gt;. Lean has even gotten into the Sheriff&#39;s Department, if you remember &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/search?q=lean+blog+jacksonville+sheriff&amp;amp;ie=utf-8&amp;amp;oe=utf-8&amp;amp;aq=t&amp;amp;rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&amp;amp;client=firefox-a&quot;&gt;my podcasts with a former Sheriff&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;center&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;font-size:85%;&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://feeds.feedburner.com/LeanBlog/&quot;&gt;Subscribe via RSS&lt;/a&gt;  | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanblog.org/&quot;&gt;Lean Blog Main Page&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanpodcast.org/&quot;&gt;Podcast&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.twitter.com/leanblog&quot;&gt;Twitter @leanblog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;blogger-post-footer&quot;&gt;Please check out my main blog page at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leanblog.org/&quot;&gt;www.leanblog.org&lt;/a&gt;
  115.  
  116. The RSS feed content you are reading is copyrighted by the author, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.markgraban.com/&quot;&gt;Mark Graban&lt;/a&gt;.
  117.  
  118. If you are reading this material on a website other than leanblog.org, planetlean.org, amazon.com, or a BlogBurst partner, the web site is possibly infringing on the author&#39;s copyright.&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://kanban.blogspot.com/feeds/922866936360796691/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=7108456&amp;postID=922866936360796691&amp;isPopup=true' title='0 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7108456/posts/default/922866936360796691'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/7108456/posts/default/922866936360796691'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://kanban.blogspot.com/2009/11/lean-healthcare-in-jacksonville.html' title='Lean Healthcare in Jacksonville'/><author><name>Mark Graban</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/07953086531083611251</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='32' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBC2ewG5wv4khS_3UfhWPWJTxC8VjhzB-LzQ-hycIa9s7qg_LDUSinCqiS0sVKd1h3ByprNuKFeZWuxPbygutJOAcLTA8xs8QwvanwqxKvzHygpTqQhezljZo9VOi-uWU/s220/twitter3.png'/></author><thr:total>0</thr:total></entry></feed>

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