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Mark Graban

Books

  • Healthcare Kaizen: Engaging Front-Line Staff in Sustainable Continuous Improvements
    Healthcare Kaizen focuses on the principles and methods of daily continuous improvement, or Kaizen, for healthcare professionals and organizations. The experiences shared in this book prove that people actually love change when they are fully engaged in the process, get to make improvements that improve patient care and make their day less frustrating, and when they don’t fear being laid off as a result of their improvements. All of the examples in the book were shared by leading healthcare organizations, with over 200 full-color pictures and visual illustrations of Kaizen-based improvements that were initiated by nurses, physicians, housekeepers, senior executives and other staff members at all levels.

Articles

  • How Toyota Can Save Your Life At The Hospital   view details
    "Spending money hasn't worked so far. While the united States far outspends other countries ($4500 per capita, while Switzerland is a distant second at about $3000 per capita), our life expectancy trails Japan (which spends about $2000 per capita), Switze
  • The Role of Purpose and Your Role   view details
    "Are you just laying bricks or are you building a cathedral? You want people to understand their purpose, not just their job description or the tasks that are assigned to them. This is very similar to Jim Womack's 'Purpose, Process, People' model. Your '
  • How a Simple Office Kanban System Works   view details
    "In setting up a system like this, you just have to be careful that the 2nd bin has enough inventory to last you until the new stock arrives. If you order weekly and the material arrives the day after, the re-order quantity really needs to be six days wor
  • Andon Cords at the Toyota Takaota Plant   view details
    "They pull the cord and a light flashes on an 'andon board' It tells the team leader which station has a problem (and music plays). Within seconds, a team leader (having two stripes on his hat) shows up to help. There is one team leader for every eight workers, on average (or 14% of their labor waiting for problems or responding to them)."

Web sites

  • Lean Manufacturing Blog
    News, articles and podcasts on the the lean manufacturing with a focus on health care by Mark Graban.
  • Be More Careful
    A Collection of workplace signs and posters that don't get to the root cause.

Our Site

Management Improvement
Library
Management Glossary
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Topical Portals

Deming
Lean Manufacturing
Six Sigma
Statistics

Management experts

George Box
W. Edwards Deming

Links

Deming
Six Sigma
Design of Experiments
Health Care
Public Sector
Lean Manufacturing