Tag: Imai

Happy New Year! As advocates of Kaizen, the philosophy and practice of continuous improvement, we recognize the value of each new year. We value...

I was saddened to learn today that Masaaki Imai passed away, as announced this week by the organization he founded, KAIZEN Institute. He was...

Thanks as always to Ryan McCormack for this... there's always so much good reading, listening, and viewing shared here by him! Subscribe to get...

Here is an interesting article that a few people pointed me toward the other day about the Seattle Mariners team: Mariners Sunday mailbag: Explaining the...

Monday, I blogged about the sushi-making class I took on my last Sunday in Japan. Later that same Sunday, I did a walking food tour in the Shibuya area. Walking food tours are a great way to explore and learn about a city. In our small group, there was a couple from Australia and a retired couple from South Africa. Between stops on the tour, the South African gentleman, a retired mining company manager or executive, asked me why I was there in Japan for work.

Lean sometimes gets, I think, an unfair rap that it’s only a method for incremental improvement. See this article, for example: “Limits of Lean — Transformative Care Redesign Must Go Beyond Typical Lean-Based Improvements.”

This week, Joe Swartz (pictured at left) and I are running a "Kaizen Live" workshop at his main hospital, Franciscan St. Francis Health. Today and...

I've been overdue in writing more posts about our Japan tour that took place two months ago now. See previous posts in this series....

A friend sent me a link to this article, "7 cultural concepts we don't have in the U.S.," and he told me to check...

The ideas, principles, and methods that we'd recognize as "Lean" aren't exclusively of Japanese origin. Many of us, myself included, draw inspiration from Toyota,...

I'll be blogging a lot more about my recent trip to Japan with Kaizen Institute, including the site visits and our lessons learned. I had...

Last week, I had the opportunity to spend a day with my Healthcare Kaizen co-author Joe Swartz and his colleagues at one of the...