Tag: Quality

Quality: Leadership, Systems Thinking, and Continuous Improvement

Quality doesn’t come from inspection, pressure, or choosing between speed and accuracy. It comes from well-designed systems, capable processes, and leaders who focus on learning instead of blame. This archive brings together blog posts, podcasts, and reflections on quality through a Lean and Deming lens—covering psychological safety, metrics, variation, leadership behavior, healthcare quality, and why sustainable improvement depends on fixing systems rather than managing people harder.

Gemba Wine: A Lean Geek Visits Wineries, Part 3

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Following up on my previous posts (here and here) on a recent visit to the Northern California Wine Country, I'm going to share a...

Gemba Wine: A Lean Geek Visits Wineries, Part 2

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Growing grapes and making wine is certainly an art... but when you look into it there's a lot of process involved. As I wrote...

ALWAYS Check Two Identifiers – In a Hospital or a Casino

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In hospitals, there's a big emphasis on healthcare professionals always checking TWO patient identifiers to help avoid getting the wrong patient. You might have...

New Website: AskMeIf.com, Buttons That Put the Quality Burden on Customers

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I've been writing for a long time  that I think it's inappropriate and ineffective to ask patients and families to inspect or police hand...

My Article on Lean Healthcare, Employee & Patient Safety in QHSE...

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QHSE Focus, an iPad magazine, asked me to contribute a piece on Lean healthcare. They published my piece titled, "Employee & Patient Safety: The Only...

Service and Quality Start with Who?

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A Lean thinking friend's wife had emergency surgery (she is going to be fine) and my friend sent some pictures of Lean-related things he...

How Toyota Builds Culture: Key Lessons from Jamie Bonini of TSSC

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Last week at the Lean Healthcare Transformation Summit, I really enjoyed the presentation by Jamie Bonini,  General Manager of the  Toyota Production System Support...

Negligent People or a Bad System Leading to Surgical Errors?

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A woman has the wrong side of her brain operated on. The headline features the hospital's name and the surgeon's name. It seems the...

Apple Expected 10% Bad iPhones from Foxconn?

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I'd read before that Apple's supplier (Foxconn) was having trouble assembling iPhone 5s to Apple's standards... but this article contains some shocking stats: "Apple...

Shorter MD Intern Work Hours – Quality Has Gotten Worse (Unless...

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In recent years, there's been a movement away from having first-year residents work such long grueling hours - 24 hour shifts or longer, multiple...

Lean Healthcare *is* About Quality – a Falsehood, a Wise CEO,...

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I always get annoyed when people spread the false dichotomy of "Lean is about efficiency and Six Sigma is for quality." Replace the word...

Breaking the Wall of Silence: Carolyn McCulley on Patient Safety, Transparency,...

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My guest for episode #168 is Carolyn McCulley, from CityGate Films, and  she is a co-director and producer of the upcoming documentary called "Breaking...
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