Posts tagged as:

lean thinking

Lean for Service Operations: Improving Healthcare

by Pete Abilla August 27, 2010

A good article in Businessweek illustrates the impact of Lean Thinking or, more specific, Lean Consumption or Lean for Service Operations can have on Healthcare. Here are a few items from that article worth noting: [Look for] integration opportunities: connecting adjacent but unconnected pieces of the patient experience to create small, incremental improvements. The integration [...]

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Video: Toyota Lexus RX Factory, Cambridge, Ontario, Canada

by Pete Abilla August 25, 2010

For those that are students of Lean Manufacturing or the Toyota Production System, but have not stepped inside a Toyota plant, this video will give you a sense of what it looks like. What you won’t see are many examples of Lean, except for a few: Minute 3:21 – You’ll see a runner, delivering a [...]

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Blendtec: Genchi Genbutsu and Visual Management

by Pete Abilla August 18, 2010

We went to Costco last weekend and there was a demonstration for Blendtec Blender – you know, those Blendtec “Will it Blend” viral videos on YouTube with that white-coat crazy scientist Blendtec founder blending everything from brooms to the iPhone. As a side-note: I met the founder and CEO of Blendtec, Tom Dickson, about 12 [...]

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Focus on the Inputs

by Pete Abilla August 17, 2010

In the April 2010 Letter to Shareholders, Jeff Bezos tells Amazon.com shareholders about their focus on inputs, the customer, and their purposeful lack of discussion around financial metrics: Senior leaders that are new to Amazon are often surprised by how little time we spend discussing actual financial results or debating projected financial outputs. To be [...]

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The Lean Startup, Video Interview, Eric Ries, Part 2

by Pete Abilla August 17, 2010
This entry is part 2 of 2 in the series The Lean Startup

This is Eric Ries, explaining The Lean Startup – this is part 2. You can see Eric Ries Lean Startup Video Interview Part 1 here. In other words, how to apply Lean Thinking to entrepreneurship and to building products and launching companies that customers love.

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The Lean Startup and Customer Development

by Pete Abilla August 16, 2010
This entry is part 2 of 7 in the series Book Review

Steve Blank, the author of “The Four Steps to the Epiphany”, explains how to effectively bring a product to market. In doing so, he applies many principles of Lean Thinking, sparking a very popular movement in the entrepreneurship and the startup world: The Lean Startup. Steve Blank argues that there are many methodologies for software [...]

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Book Review: Clinical 5S for Healthcare

by Pete Abilla August 14, 2010

Akio Takahara is the leading lean practitioner and expert on the 5S support system in Healthcare. In his book, he claims that 5S in Healthcare will do the following: Reduce human errors Prevent patient accidents Eliminate the waste of searching Better utilize available work space Increase patient and colleague satisfaction It’s very refreshing to see [...]

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reCAPTCHA: A Problem, A Solution, an Innovation

by Pete Abilla August 13, 2010

reCAPTCHA is one of the most innovative ideas that I’ve ever come across. What is fascinating is that reCAPTCHA solves a real human problem in such a simple an innovative way. To some degree, Luis Von Ahn, the inventor of reCAPTCHA, followed the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) framework in Lean – without even knowing it. What if [...]

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Do Not Do 5S – Yet

by Pete Abilla August 12, 2010

I’ve never understood why most organizations start their Lean journey with 5S. Most consultants advocate this approach also. I take a different view. In an earlier post, Jamie Flinchbaugh argues that organizations shouldn’t begin their Lean journey with 5S for the following reasons: If your first step in Lean is one that involves mandates, it [...]

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