Konnichiwa from Japan! I am having a great time with my friends from Kaizen Institute and our tour attendees. I wrote a post on Monday, but I never expect to be able to write much while here because it's very busy and I also want to reflect a bit before writing.
In this post, I share two articles I wrote recently and some other tidbits...
This Thursday, we'll be hosting a webinar presented by a former Toyota engineer, Jess Orr. She will be sharing lessons learned at Toyota about the A3 problem-solving methodology, referred to there as "Toyota Business Practices." In particular, Jess will be sharing a case study about using the A3 approach to improving communication.
Exactly 500 years ago today, Martin Luther famously nailed a document to a church door that pointed out problems and ideas for change and reform. He packed a lot into a single page. Was this, in a way, the first “A3”…
I really enjoyed and appreciated this new white paper that was written by Dr. Lisa Yerian and Nate Hurle from The Cleveland Clinic: “No More Projects: Kick-starting a continuous-improvement culture in healthcare“ The paper was published by Catalysis and is available…
I had a chance to visit one of their community hospitals, Hillcrest Hospital, as well as the main campus. It was a very stimulating visit and it was great to see the progress they were making in building a “culture of improvement.”
Mark’s note: Today’s post is something that Drew Locher originally published in his email newsletter (sign up here), but he’s allowing me to post it here. I’ve met Drew through the Lean Enterprise Institute, as we’re both LEI faculty members, and…
On Tuesday, I hosted, via KaiNexus, a webinar with Jon Miller on the important topic of “Practical Problem Solving,” a structured 8-step method for solving problems. I wrote a blog post about this for the KaiNexus blog, previewing the webinar…
Today, I'm sharing a link to some free "Lean 101" material that the AMA has created for physicians. I'm not sure when this initiative launched, but I just learned about it... the AMA is offering some online education about Lean in healthcare...
If you’ve got time over the weekend (or in the near future)… about three hours to be precise… these three four podcast episodes from Gemba Academy are outstanding and they’re well worth the time. Jon Miller, former CEO of Kaizen Institute,…
Here’s my latest cartoon collaboration with a skilled artist (and medical assistant), Carrie Schurman. You can see the whole series via this link. In the Lean world, we talk a lot about how “firefighting” is bad in an organization. What do…
TL;DR: Quality Circles are still thriving in Japanese hospitals and companies–rooted in the philosophy of developing people through structured problem solving. What some in the West now call “A3 Thinking” or “PDSA” is alive and well in Japan as a…
PDSA, back to the days of Dr. Deming, has stood for Plan Do Study Adjust. A key point in the application of PDSA (and a key to A3 problem solving), is to avoid jumping to solutions. We Plan — and this…
