Tag: TQM

In the third and final part of this series, I share more about how Toyota teaches about TPS and TQM... and how they are sharing that approach with doctors and hospitals.

Last week, I wrote about the influence of Total Quality Management (TQM) on Toyota -- in the past and the present, in Japan and beyond. Today, to follow up on that, I'm going to share some excerpts from some material that was shared by a Toyota leader who presented at a hospital I visited earlier this year as part of the Kaizen Institute-organized Japan trip.

I'm very excited to be leaving for Japan for another study trip in just over a month. This will be my second trip this year, this time with Honsha, after previous (and hopefully future) trips organized by Kaizen Institute. Even though the previous tours have been focused on Toyota, as well as Lean and Kaizen in various organizations, one common thread is Total Quality Management, or TQM. In many Japanese organizations, TQM has been a solid foundation of practice for two or three decades, where it tended to be a fad here in the U.S., as I've blogged about:

I'm overdue in writing more about my last trip to Japan a few months back. Today, I'll like to share some highlights from one organization we visited, Seki Chuo Hospital, which is located outside of Nagoya. I have visited this hospital in 2012 and 2014 and it's interesting to see how their approach to Total Quality Management (TQM), Lean, and Kaizen has progressed and evolved. I mentioned them in a 2014 post about "quality circles."

Not all Japanese companies are the same. "Lean isn't easy" if you're a Japanese company. Toyota has created something special, since "Toyota culture" is not exactly the same as "Japanese culture." The WSJ says the "model is cracking." Do scandals involving quality and ethical lapses involving companies including those and Nissan tarnish Lean and the Toyota Production System? No. That's as silly as thinking the Wells Fargo banking scandal tarnishes Silicon Valley (although the Valley does enough to tarnish itself).

Cleaning out the backlog of stuff I wanted to blog about... Not Being Lean Lemmings; Why Best Practices Don't Yokoten; Nissan Leaders Lead the Way, After the Problems

I continue sharing documents from the Don Ephlin library archive. What did Ford and the UAW learn when they visited Japan in 1981? Many of the things that made Japanese industry successful are the same things that make organizations successful with Lean today, including in healthcare.

Some of you reading this might remember the Total Quality Management (TQM) movement of the late 1980s and 1990s. Many would look back and label it a “fad.” As I’ve said about Lean, it’s only a fad to those who are susceptible to fads. As I blogged about in 2006, management is often prone to...

Another question I get thrown at me very often is something along the lines of “How do we get more buy in for ______” with that space being filled with Lean, Kaizen, 5S, using the EMR system, improvement, or any number of terms. If you do a Google search for Lean “lack of buy in”...

Alternate title: “Lean is an Integrated System. Of Course Just Implementing Pieces Leads to Failure.” Throughout the 10 years that I’ve been involved with Lean healthcare efforts, I’ve heard multiple stories of organizations that ended their formal Lean initiatives. They do so, as I’ve been told, because they need to cut costs...