Tag: Culture

I recently read this article on the IndustryWeek website: Whirlpool's Green Takes Aim at World Class Manufacturing Byron Green, the vice president of manufacturing for Whirlpool's 14 factories in the U.S. and Mexico, said: "...manufacturing was littered with companies that saw lean as a collection of tools that could be deployed for a quick win. Successful companies, he said, instead see it as a bedrock of their culture."....

I recently blogged about a healthcare improvement job posting that had me scratching my head when the interviewing process included an process improvement exercise...

One book about the late, great W. Edwards Deming that's been on my shelf for a while is The Deming Management Method, which was written by Mary Walton, a journalist who spent some time with Dr. Deming in the 1980s. There's a section that really made me think about Lean over the past few decades (and it might seem familiar to those who use Six Sigma or other methods).

Today, we're looking back at a podcast that I did back in 2015 with Alan G. Robinson, PhD, co-author of many books including The Idea-Driven Organization....

Every month or two, Greg Jacobson, MD and I have an "Ask Us Anything" video discussion with questions submitted by members of our KaiNexus...

Another in the series of "do words matter?" posts... do phrases like "Lean Transformation" resonate as much as "Business Transformation?"

In this post, I share some thoughts and build upon one of the presentations at last week's Lean Healthcare Transformation Summit, where, Tim Pehrson, a regional CEO for Intermountain Healthcare, talked about how they piloted a continuous improvement process in one region... and how they're now spreading it throughout the system. This leads to confusion, in online discussion, about terms like projects, suggestions, ideas, and such...

How big is the opportunity for improvement in healthcare? As Dr. Toussaint's hand gesture, above, indicates... it's a huge opportunity. There's a huge need. What's...

A culture of continuous improvement is really powerful - in a pizza restaurant or any type of workplace. It engages Milennials and people from other generations too...

Thanks to Lean Frontiers for sharing a story from Mike Hoseus on LinkedIn. Mike is, of course, co-author of the excellent book Toyota Culture: The Heart and Soul of the Toyota Way (written with Jeff Liker, who I just learned is retiring from the University of Michigan... more on that soon).

It's good that United's CEO has taken responsibility for system problems. It's great that they are changing some policies. But why does he say they don't have a culture problem if employees aren't empowered? That sounds like "culture" and a "problem" to me.

In today's post, I write about James Hereford, a Lean thinker and leader who is now CEO of Fairview Health Services in Minnesota. I share some links to and highlights from a past podcast with him and other blog posts with his thoughts.