Lean Healthcare Archives | Page 4 of 6

GA 156 | The Current State of Lean in Healthcare with Mark Graban and Joe Swartz

By Jessica Bush - March 30th, 2017

This week’s guests are Mark Graban and Joe Swartz, both leaders in lean healthcare. They discussed the past and current states of lean in healthcare, as well as their upcoming workshop, Kaizen Live. An MP3 version of this episod

GA 153 | From Tiffany & Co. to Toyota with Josh Sanchez

By Jessica Bush - March 9th, 2017

This week’s guest is Josh Sanchez, a continuous improvement practitioner with a fascinating background. Josh worked for Tiffany & Co. before landing a job at Toyota, and is now transitioning into a healthcare role. Ron and J

GA 152 | TWI, Kata, and Respect for People with Skip Steward and Brandon Brown

By Jessica Bush - March 2nd, 2017

This week’s guests are Skip Steward and Brandon Brown. We had the pleasure of interviewing them while attending the KataCon/TWI Summits in San Diego. They both shared a lot of valuable insight with us regarding TWI, Kata, Respec

GA 144 | How to Apply Toyota Kata with Amy Mervak

By Jessica Bush - January 5th, 2017

This week’s guest is Amy Mervak, Chief Quality and Compliance Officer at Hospice Care of Southwest Michigan. Ron and Amy talked about Toyota Kata, and how she and her team have been able to apply it. An MP3 version of this episo

Free Webinar "Continuous Improvement" Dec. 7, 2011

By Jon Miller - November 22nd, 2011

The Visual Management webinar with Kaizen Institute consultant Mike Wroblewski was immensely popular, and we are pleased to announce the next free webinar from Gemba Academy. Webinar: Putting the Continuous Back in Continuous Improveme

Monitoring Agency Revises Date for Peak Lean

By Jon Miller - October 19th, 2011

October 19, 2011 Brussels (AP) One of the world’s leading efficiency trends monitoring agency, the Organization of Practitioners in Lean Enterprise Advancement and Sustainability (OPLEAS) issued a statement today revising the exp

Designing Better Hospitals with 3P: Video

By Jon Miller - September 11th, 2011

The Production Preparation Process (3P) is a method for bringing together a team to evaluate the requirements of a design, apply lean principles and use low-cost rapid prototyping (a.k.a. cardboard engineering) to achieve breakthrough

Children's Hospital of Saskatchewan – Getting Lean

By Jon Miller - June 28th, 2011

Here is a great 4-minute Youtube video showing how the Kaizen Institute teams in the USA and Canada applied the lean methodology of Production Preparation Process (3P) in designing a new facility at the Children’s Hospital of Sas

3rd Annual Management Blog Review 1 of 2: DailyKaizen

By Jon Miller - January 18th, 2011

Every so often John Hunter of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog organizes a handful of us to review the writing of other bloggers. The 3rd annual review involves 14 bloggers introducing the work of 50 others. My choice was to

Waste Rules the Empty Spaces Between Us

By Jon Miller - October 13th, 2010

The latest episode in the chronicle of the lean journey at Group Health Cooperative in Washington State is A Story from the Front By Dr. Wellesley Chapman. Dr. Wellesley writes about the experience of launching the lean transformation

Shifting Care to the Front Line

By Jon Miller - October 3rd, 2010

An article in the October 2010 issue of the Scientific American titled “Closing the Healthcare Gap” revealed the importance of primary care physicians in improving the healthcare system and also the problem of a shortage of

What’s Next for Lean?

By Jon Miller - August 21st, 2010

Whether I am speaking about lean to an audience of one or one hundred if the conversation goes on long enough the question inevitably arises; what’s next for lean? I always manage an answer, typically tying it to the theme of the

The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right by Atul Gawande

By Jon Miller - April 6th, 2010

I just finished reading and thoroughly enjoyed The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right by Dr. Atul Gawande. I recommend it. Mark Graban at the Lean Blog has written passionately and at length about the value of checklists in i

LEI Brings the Healthcare Gemba to You, Virtually

By Jon Miller - January 24th, 2010

Way back in the day when I was traveling all over the country as an interpreter for Japanese consultants I imagined what it would take to remove the non-value added part of this process: the travel. I imagined a the Japanese sensei wal

How to Use Lean to Achieve Bottom Line Results

By Jon Miller - December 22nd, 2009

In an e-mail, blog reader Heather asked: How else can you use lean to achieve bottom line results besides a growth strategy? The growth strategy for delivering bottom line results through lean goes something this: lean improvements cre

What Would Newt Gingrich do with American Health Care?

By Jon Miller - October 17th, 2009

Newt Gingrich is an American scholar, politician and a man of big ideas. Not all big ideas are meant to be put into practice, but these comments from an interview in The Intelligencer article titled Gingrich: Republican Party Recoverin

Agnosia: Losing the Ability to See the Obvious

By Jon Miller - August 24th, 2009

In order to succeed at leading anything that involves people, one needs to know a lot about people. This is especially true when it comes to lean manufacturing, lean retail, lean distribution, lean healthcare or whatever you prefer to

What Can Lean Do for the Healthcare Business Office?

By Jon Miller - August 6th, 2009

Daisy asked, What can lean do for the Healthcare business office? The billers, the insurance follow up staff? Lean can do a great things for the healthcare business office. I have asked Chris Schrandt to answer this one. Chris has been

Value Added Percentage Question

By Jon Miller - July 16th, 2009

Yesterday I came across an example of a value stream whose numbers left me puzzled. The value-added percentage was greater than 100. This seemed impossible at first but I now understand how it can happen. The process, the numbers, and

Review of Follow the Learner by Dr. Sami Bahri, DDS

By Jon Miller - June 10th, 2009

Follow the Learner: The Role of a Leader in Creating a Lean Culture by Dr. Sami Bahri, DDS is the best book on the subject of leadership and lean I have read in a long time. Written as a very personal account of the development of teh

Visual Management Resource for Lean Hospitals

By Jon Miller - April 13th, 2009

Here is another recent find on visual management: the website of MediFilm “the leaders in healthcare visual management systems”. Who knew there was such a thing to be leaders of? Well done in any case, making a product out

Part 3 of Q&A with Mark Graban, Author of Lean Hospitals

By Jon Miller - October 8th, 2008

We would like to express our gratitude to Mark Graban for taking the time to provide in-depth answers to questions regarding his experience in lean healthcare as well as expounding on ideas and examples from his book Lean Hospitals. Th

Part 2 of Q&A with Mark Graban, Author of Lean Hospitals

By Jon Miller - October 8th, 2008

We continue our question and answer session on the topic of lean healthcare with Mark Graban, author of Lean Hospitals: Q9: You wrote in Lean Hospitals that it takes courage to point out that something is a waste. How have you been abl

Part 1 of Q&A with Mark Graban, Author of Lean Hospitals

By Jon Miller - October 6th, 2008

This is the first part of our question & answer session with Mark Graban, author of Lean Hospitals. Mark has been kind enough to take the time to give us thoughtful and in-depth answers. Here is the first installment of 8, with 12

Improving Healthcare Delivery by Studying Toyota

By Jon Miller - March 17th, 2008

The Seattle Post Intelligencer has a good article giving an update on the lean journey at Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle, titled To build a better hospital, Virginia Mason takes lessons from Toyota plants When you think of a

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