Episode #141 is a chat with Norman Bodek, as he shares his recollections of working with Taiichi Ohno, one of the creators of the Toyota Production System. Norman met and worked with Ohno in Japan and then published the translation of Ohno’s classic book “Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-Scale Production” in 1988.

Episode #140 is a discussion with Scott Patten and Peter Armstrong from LeanPub.com – they want to be THE website for publishing “in-progress books”. We’ll be talking about lean publishing and how that’s different than self publishing and about how leanpub.com works. In the upcoming part 2 of the podcast, we’ll talk more about how they are applying the concepts of the Lean Startup methodology to their service and their business.

Episode #139 is a conversation with Dave Munch, MD, who is the Senior Vice President and Chief Clinical Officer for Healthcare Performance Partners (HPP). Before joining the consulting firm, Dave was a senior C-level clinical leader at Exempla Lutheran Health System where he led their Lean Production applications for more than five years, resulting in substantial improvements in both clinical and non-clinical processes. Today, we are talking about important Lean mindsets and systems principles, including making it safe for people to surface problems in the workplace and aligning management behaviors and methods at all levels so we can use Lean to achieve our most important objectives in healthcare. Dave is also a speaker at the upcoming Lean Healthcare PowerDay event, produced by HPP. Hope to see you there!

Episode #138 is a discussion with Al Norval from Lean Pathways, talking about his new publication titled "The Lean Manifesto: Back to basics - how a Lean business system creates value by engaging everyone in improvement." It's a free six-page document and you can download it here (email registration required). The manifesto is a fun, upbeat guide to the basics of the Lean methodology and management system, including a brief history of Lean, as well as its foundational concepts, and a discussion of why "just in time" is not the right place to start.

Episode #137 is a chat with Jerry Bussell, founder of the Jacksonville Lean Consortium. I've met and talked with Jerry many times through LEI, so I'm thrilled to finally get him on the podcast. Jerry is a retired Medtronic executive (leading Lean efforts in a unit that won the Shingo Prize), he's now doing work with healthcare quality improvement, he's writing a new book, and he's speaking at the Lean Transformation Summit next month in Jacksonville.

Jerry is also friends with Sami Bahri, DDS - and he's also a patient of the "World's First Lean Dentist" (click here for my podcasts with Sami, episodes 29, 69, and 82).

Our guest for episode #136 is Paul Akers, President of FastCap and author of the book 2 Second Lean. Here, we are talking about the new book and how small improvements that save 2 seconds in your daily work can contribute to an engaging and fun "Lean Culture." You can also view a video recording of the discussion here on YouTube.

Our guest for episode #135 is Dan Markovitz, author of the new book A Factory of One: Applying Lean Principles to Banish Waste and Improve Your Personal Performance. If your New Year's resolutions include improving your own personal productivity, Dan is a great person to talk to about the application of Lean principles to your own professional work - whether you work in an aspiring Lean organization or not.

Episode #134 is a different topic than usual. Instead of strictly talking Lean, today’s discussion is about broader issues of healthcare quality and our United States military. Joining me are Daniel Sullivan, President and General Manager of the The Sergeant Thomas Joseph Sullivan Center (SSC), a non-profit organization that is dedicated to improving health outcomes for current and former military personnel, especially those who are suffering from emerging, complicated, or currently unexplained post deployment health concerns. Named in honor of a fallen marine, the Sgt. Sullivan Center promotes the health security of America’s troops and the principle that none should be left behind. Also joining us is Gregory Jacobson, MD, a college friend of Daniel’s and the co-founder and CEO of KaiNexus, also a b

Episode #133 is hosted by Ron Pereira, from Gemba Academy, as he leads me through additional Q&A as a follow up to our recent webinar on my upcoming book Healthcare Kaizen and some of the concepts from the book on the theme of “Putting the Continuous Back in Continuous Improvement.” You can view the recording via this link.

Two of the main themes were that “kaizen” is not always about weeklong events and that suggestion boxes are not the same as the kaizen approach. Kaizen ideally involves everyone in continuous improvement, facilitated in ways that are better than the slow, batchy, non-collaborative suggestion box approach that many have tried and struggled with before.

A returning guest for episode #132, we are joined by author and professor Bob Emiliani. Today, we are chatting about some videos he recently posted to his website… 10 year old videos that document executives from Virginia Mason Medical Center, now considered a leader in Lean healthcare, visiting a Lean manufacturing company, Wiremold.