Lean Blog Interviews: Real-World Lean Leadership Conversations in Healthcare and Beyond

By Mark GrabanBusiness Management

Lean Blog Interviews: Real-World Lean Leadership Conversations in Healthcare and Beyond episodes

March 27, 2007 Norman Bodek, "Building People"
LeanBlog Podcast Episode #21 features our friend and frequent guest, Norman Bodek, noted lean author, consultant, and President of PCS Press. In this Podcast, we talk about how Lean should be good for a company's employees, that Lean and the Toyota Production system are really about building people and investing in them rather than laying people off.
Norman's previous Podcast episodes can be found on the Podcast main page, at www.leanpodcast.org.
If you have feedback on the podcast, or any questions for me or my guests, you can email me at [email protected] or you can call and leave a voicemail by calling the "Lean Line" at (817) 776-LEAN (817-776-5326) or contact me via Skype id "mgraban". Please give your location and your first name. Any comments (email or voicemail) might be used in follow ups to the podcast.
23 min
March 27, 2007Norman Bodek on Building People with Lean and the Toyota Production System *
Show notes: https://www.leanblog.org/21
Remastered June 2021
LeanBlog Podcast Episode #21 features our friend and frequent guest, Norman Bodek, noted lean author, consultant, and President of PCS Press.
In this Podcast, we talk about how Lean should be good for a company's employees, that Lean and the Toyota Production System are really about building people and investing in them rather than laying people off.
Norman's previous Podcast episodes can be found on the Podcast main page. Here is a link to Norman's books via Amazon.com.
Show Notes and Approximate Time, Episode #21
2:00 Question from a blog reader: Is lean good for employees in the long term, or is it just good for the company and for management?
2:40 “Unfortunately, many companies are implementing lean to make more money, only…. without understanding the full power of the Toyota model”
3:00 Toyota not only builds cars, it builds people
4:45 Toyota has one team leader for every 4 to 7 people (as opposed to companies that often have a 100 to 1 ratio)
5:20 Toyota's Gary Convis
6:30 Toyota's two pillars: 1) Just-in-Time and 2) Respect for People — the second pillar is now this instead of “Jidoka” (quality at the source)??
8:30 As Deming said, you have to root out fear from the organization, it's a form of waste that comes from viewing people as expendable
10:15 Examples of how Toyota has invested in people over time, made use of their talents
11:20 When has the “mass production” system ever been good for people?
12:15 Norman's Quick and Easy Kaizen
, making work exciting by getting ideas and suggestions from employees
16:50 “I want you to come up with ideas to make your work easier, to make your work more interesting…” that empowers people, as opposed to all decisions coming from the top down
18:15 “What's the ROI of bringing in Norman Bodek?”
19:30 “There's nothing magical that Toyota's doing that American companies can't do!”
19:40 The book Norman likes, Getting the Right Things Done and the Hoshin Kanri process
20:30 Norman, Gary Convis, and the A3 report
23 min
March 18, 2007Expert Interview: Kevin Meyer on Driving Lean Transformation and Onshoring *
Show notes: https://www.leanblog.org/20
Remastered July 2021
The LeanBlog Podcast is back with episode #20, our guest is Kevin Meyer, the founder of Superfactory Ventures, which can be found at Superfactory.com. You may know Kevin from his popular blog, Evolving Excellence. We'll be talking about a number of lean topics including his upcoming panel moderation at the Kellogg Manufacturing Business Conference, being held in Evanston IL in May.
If you enjoy this podcast, I hope you'll check out the rest of the series by visiting the LeanBlog Podcast main page.
Show Notes and Approximate Time, Episode #20
1:30 How Kevin got started with Lean
3:00 About the Evolving Excellence Blog
5:00 Blogging as a learning experience
6:00 Kevin will be speaking at Northwestern University, moderating a panel discussion on in-sourcing on on-shoring at their Manufacturing Business Conference
6:20 Companies that have been able to build manufacturing competencies in the U.S., rather than running overseas, looking at total cost, rather than just labor cost
8:00 The conference is May 12, open to registration by the public (main conference page)
8:15 A list of companies Kevin has talked about on the blog
9:10 How can we spread the word and fight the perception that you can't do manufacturing here?
9:45 Kevin's example of a custom ski manufacturer who imports very small quantities from China rather than doing it here
10:30 Danaher as a good example of lean and U.S. competitiveness
10:50 American Leather, building furniture here in Texas
12:20 Kevin's example of Avery Dennison
13:30 Are retailers encouraging lean practices or pushing suppliers overseas?
14:30 Are there some valid reasons for building in China?
15:40 Kevin's example of American Apparel
16:30 New Zealand manufacturing and off-shoring pressures
17:30 Kevin talks about lean and the value of experience in the workforce, Whirlpool example of moving to Mexico and throwing away that experience
20:30 The book from the blog, written by Kevin and Bill Waddell : Evolving Excellence: Thoughts on Lean Enterprise Leadership
23 min
March 10, 2007Jim Womack Revisits ”The Machine That Changed the World” (Updated Edition) *
Show notes: https://www.leanblog.org/19
Remastered June 2021
Episode #19 of the Lean Blog Podcast brings the return of Jim Womack. Jim was sitting in Melbourne Australia, where he had been speaking about lean healthcare, a topic that we will discuss in a future podcast.
In this podcast, we talk about Jim's reflections on the book The Machine That Changed the World and its recent reissuing by the publisher (with updates). In the podcast, Jim not only talks about Toyota's success, but ways in which Toyota could fail or falter in the future. This is the first part of our discussion, I will release the second part in the upcoming weeks.
If you enjoy this podcast, I hope you'll check out the rest of the series by visiting the LeanBlog Podcast main page. Earlier podcasts with Jim can be found here (#12) and here (#13).
Show Notes and Approximate Time, Episode #19
1:30 Jim's thoughts on “Machine,” written about “why the teams [GM, Ford, Chrysler] can't win the away games”
1:55 The book before “Machine” was “The Future of the Automobile” (1984)
2:15 The job of “Machine” was to describe a complete business system… “the biggest disappointment… was to have people tell me it was a great book about factories.”
3:00 “You get the feeling that a lot of people read the book, but just that one chapter [on manufacturing].”
3:50 Probably about a million copies sold so far
4:00 The publisher said that 2007 is the year when Toyota is probably going to pass GM, so why don't we re-issue it?
4:20 The new subtitle is “Why Toyota Won”
4:45 “We've learned a lot since then… some of what we told you in the book is not exactly right, so we're thinking of it not exactly as a product recall, but as a model line enhancement. This is what might have been the 1991 model if we had done annual model changes.”
5:30 Is there risk of a backlash with Toyota becoming #1? Jim talks about “ways in which Toyota could lose,” starting with manufacturing
10:50 “They could go native”
10:05 How Toyota could lose with the product development system (book by Al Ward)
10:40 The Jeff Liker book on product development (“they are complements to each other,” Jim says): The Toyota Product Development System: Integrating People, Process And Technology
14:30 How Toyota could fail with their dealer system
15:45 Jim's essay on farmers and hunters
22:40 GM and the X-cars (info here and here)
24:10 Jim asks, “Can Toyota screw up? For the short term, the answer is no, for the long term, absolutely!”
24:30 “Most any other company would be fat, dumb, and happy.”
24:50 What about the excuses the Big 3 make about currency factors, etc.?
25:30 How the Big 3 are like the Detroit Lions
27 min
February 19, 2007Eric Christiansen on Being CEO of a Deming Company *
Show notes: https://www.leanblog.org/18
Remastered July 2021
Here is Episode #18 of the LeanBlog Podcast. My guest today is Eric Christiansen, the President of a translation services company, OmniLingua (more can be found here on their philosophy as a company, being a self-described “Deming Company.”) I was interested in talking with Eric about what it means to be a “Deming Company” and about their implementation of “wiki” tools (ala Wikipedia) for managing their standard work and process documentation.
If you enjoy this podcast, I hope you'll check out the rest of the series by visiting the LeanBlog podcast main page.
Show Notes and Approximate Time, Episode #18
1:30 Introducing Eric and his company
3:15 What does it mean to be a “Deming company?”
3:40 The Deming System of Profound Knowledge
4:00 The owner of OmniLingua had worked directly with Deming and appreciated the people aspects of his philosophy, how do you treat people with respect?
4:40 Has the annual review been abolished? Sales commissions were abolished, as well as production bonus plans. OmniLingua has a company-wide profit sharing plan instead.
5:15 More examples of the Deming philosophy in day-to-day life, including long-term sole-source supplier relationships
7:00 Is there still internal competition?
7:45 “Are we hiring salespeople who can't sell?” by not having commissions
8:40 How have lean methods evolved at OmniLingua?
10:15 Standard work within the company and the evolution into the use of “Wiki” technology for standard work
13:30 How they modified the process to allow some additional revision and ownership control (after an ISO audit)
15:00 How did it work when everybody had access to modify the standard work documentation?
17:00 How many people have access to the different standard work documents?
19:00 With a Word-document based standard work, people wanted to fancy them up, Wiki keeps people focused on the content
21:30 Deployment started last November (2005)
23 min
January 23, 2007 David Meier, "Lean in China"
LeanBlog Podcast #17 is a discussion with a good friend of the Lean Blog, David Meier, a former Toyota Georgetown Group Leader, founder of Lean Associates, and the co-author of the excellent book, The Toyota Way Fieldbook, and the upcoming Toyota Talent, due out in April (both co-authored with Jeff Liker, check out my Podcasts with him here and here). In this Podcast, we talk about David's recent first hand experiences with factories in China. Are there labor shortages? Is there a lot of waste in Chinese factories? Do the Chinese have good management skills at this point? What lean methods did David see in China? We'll cover all this and more.
If you have feedback on the podcast, or any questions for me or my guests, you can email me at [email protected] or you can call and leave a voicemail by calling the "Lean Line" at (817) 776-LEAN (817-776-5326) or contact me via Skype id "mgraban". Please give your location and your first name. Any comments (email or voicemail) might be used in follow ups to the podcast. Visit www.leanpodcast.org for the main LeanBlog Podcast page with all previous episodes.
31 min
January 23, 2007David Meier on the State of Lean Manufacturing and Management in China *
Show notes: https://www.leanblog.org/17
Remastered July 2021
LeanBlog Podcast #17 is a discussion with a good friend of the Lean Blog, David Meier, a former Toyota Georgetown Group Leader, founder of Lean Associates, and the co-author of the excellent book, The Toyota Way Fieldbook, and the upcoming Toyota Talent, due out in April (both co-authored with Jeff Liker, check out my Podcasts with him here and here).
In this podcast, we talk about David's recent first hand experiences with factories in China. Are there labor shortages? Is there a lot of waste in Chinese factories? Do the Chinese have good management skills at this point? What lean methods did David see in China? We'll cover all this and more.
If you enjoy this podcast, I hope you'll check out the rest of the series by visiting the LeanBlog podcast main page.
Show Notes and Approximate Time, Episode #17
2:00 Overall, pretty surprised, Chinese factories are in good condition, but there are some real labor shortages growing, intense cost pressures from other countries (India, Vietnam, Turkey, etc.)
3:00 Lots of struggles from the supply chain side and total cost, “China isn't as great a deal as they anticipated in the beginning” (inbound supply chains)
4:00 “One company had 160% turnover last year”
4:15 Local management isn't that strong, so companies bring in their own management(which is costly to bring in foreigners)
4:45 David was frustrated to see the same challenges and problems in China that are typical here, including the “kaizen blitz” mindset (companies aren't getting long-term satisfaction or a sustainable process)
5:50 Saw one company (a clothing manufacturer in China) that took “one piece flow” to such an extreme that it was costing them in other ways, companies are missing the point of what Lean really is
6:30 More on the single piece flow situation – are you implementing single piece flow or are you improving performance?
10:00 What about Chinese factories and their metrics and goals? David was surprised to hear how everyone was focused on efficiency and labor cost
11:00 David saw a lot of Non Value Added activity (20-30% of people's activity) because ofthe way work was structured
11:40 “Big shortage of Industrial Engineers in China”
12:45 Chinese managers learn “mass production management” or lean management methods?
13:45 “I didn't see any factories that would be a model of lean” and David was visiting companies who had expressed some interest in being lean
14:15 What lean methods did David see at Chinese factories?
15:20 David says there is a general lack of understanding about how to use “Value Stream Mapping”
17:15 David and Jeff Liker are working on a new book about systems and how to develop the system properly, how to use the system (such as Kanban) to drive continuous improvement
17:45 An earlier new book, “Toyota Talent” is coming out in April
18:30 After the Fieldbook, David and Jeff realized there were some topics they could really expand on, Toyota Talent, lean systems, and problem solving.
20:15 A preview of Toyota Talent... didn't see much “Standardized Work” in China, the depth of lean there isn't as great as in the U.S. The book looks at how you break down jobs and train people.
22:00 People look at Toyota and assume that standardized work only applies in repetitive, highly cyclical jobs (but Toyota has a lot of jobs that don't fit that mold)
24:30 David comparing the high turnover in China with the high turnover in fast food and how McDonald's simplifies things, uses standard work, makes it visual, etc. But why do they accept the turnover?
25:45 The NPR piece on In-N-Out Burger and how they value employees.
26:45 David points out how you have to look at total cost, not just the low hourly labor cost
27:30 Is everything going to inevitably move to China? We're trying to compete against that with Lean, reducing costs through Lean methods and improved/faster response.
31 min
January 14, 2007Jim Baran on Recruiting Lean Talent and the State of the Lean Jobs Market *
Show notes: https://www.leanblog.org/16
Remastered July 2021
LeanBlog Podcast #16 is the first part of two with Jim Baran, the Owner of Value Stream Leadership, a leading recruiting firm that specializes in Lean talent. I've known Jim for a few years now and he's helped me and some colleagues in the past. He's a great recruiter who really takes some interest in you and your career. If you're looking to make a career change or if you're looking for lean talent, I can personally recommend him.
In our discussion, we talk about the state of the job market for folks with lean experience and what helps a lean candidate stand out in the marketplace. If you enjoy this podcast, I hope you'll check out the rest of the series by visiting the LeanBlog podcast main page.
Show Notes and Approximate Time, Episode #16
1:30 About Jim, his background with lean, about his firm
2:50 What does it mean, “retained search firm”?
4:40 Jim's firm defines lean as “Toyota Way leadership” — Toyota Production System AND the Toyota Product Development System
5:00 How is the job market for lean talent, generally speaking?
6:30 People “used to hire forktruck operators out of Toyota” because they thought they knew the secret sauce
7:40 Jim Womack's email about the end of “the lean tool age”
8:00 How do you consider someone's individual or local lean accomplishments versus a good candidate having been in a prototypical lean company?
9:30 What are Jim's 5 profiles for excellent lean candidates?
10:30 Been in the Toyota Product Development System market very heavily lately, the talent with experience there has been slim
12:30 The market for lean in services areas
16:00 What about recruitment for executive level positions?
21:45 Harder to find people who can use lean to drive growth or revenue rather than only reducing costs/waste
26 min
January 07, 2007Interview with Jim Huntzinger on ”Training Within Industry” *
Show notes: https://leanblog.org/15
Remastered July 2021
eanBlog Podcast #15 is a new discussion with a previous Podcast guest, Jim Huntzinger. Last time, we talked about the Lean Accounting Summit.
This time, we're talking about the renaissance of the “Training Within Industry” program. We'll talk about the origins of this program, the impact it had on Toyota and the Toyota Production System, and why the program is being bought back in the United States and in lean circles.
Jim is also organizing a Training Within Industry Summit, June 5-6 of 2007. Check the Show Notes, down below, for more links to TWI resources and information.
Show Notes and Approximate Time, Episode #15
Background: Copies of the original TWI manuals
Background: Wikipedia page on TWI
2:30 Background of the TWI program prior to the U.S. entry into WWII
3:15 How did TWI get promoted in Japan during the U.S. occupation?
4:15 How did TWI get incorporated into the Toyota Production System? “It is an excellent industrial training program on its own” but Toyota also built upon the system
6:00 What were some of the motivations behind TWI? What did they hope to achieve?
7:15 What are the different components of the TWI approach… Job Methods and Job Instruction, the focus on training people HOW to train, etc.
9:15 At Toyota, Ohno thought “Job Methods” was a little too “point focused” and he wanted to look more at the “value stream”
9:45 “Job Relations” focuses on how to be a supervisor, how to drive kaizen, etc.
11:00 How did TWI get “rediscovered” recently? Mentioned in the book Becoming Lean: Inside Stories of U.S. Manufacturers
13:45 What are the unique things Toyota was able to do with the TWI program?
14:15 TWI was focused on training NEW employees, how does TWI apply when you have long time employees who never had standard work or standard methods?
15:45 Toyota still uses Job Instruction today for training their experienced people
16:15 TWI says you have to “get the employee motivated to learn” – how do you do this?
17:45 Why did American companies move away from TWI after the war?
19:00 Early challenges with getting management focused on sustaining TWI methods
19:30 To learn more about TWI:
Training Within Industry: The Foundation Of Lean (Don Dinero, history of TWI)
The Twi Workbook: Essential Skills for Supervisors (Bob Wrona, hos to use TWI today)
Jim's article “The Roots of Lean”
Plenty of articles and references through Google
23 min
December 29, 2006 Dave Gleditsch, Pelion Systems
LeanBlog Podcast #14 is a discussion with Dave Gleditsch, the Chief
Technology Officer for Pelion Systems, a leading provider of software
for lean manufacturing applications. I first met Dave after I read his
Industry Week columns and traded some emails with him. He has a great
background in manufacturing and lean, so I think he has an interesting
perspective to share on lean and techonology. Don't worry, this
podcast isn't a sales pitch for Pelion's software. I think you'll
enjoy the discussion.
If you have feedback on the podcast, or any questions for me or my
guests, you can email me at [email protected] or you can call and
leave a voicemail by calling the "Lean Line" at (817) 776-LEAN
(817-776-5326) or contact me via Skype id "mgraban". Please give your
location and your first name. Any comments (email or voicemail) might
be used in follow ups to the podcast. Visit the main LeanBlog Podcast
page (www.leanpodcast.org) for all previous episodes.
38 min

About Lean Blog Interviews: Real-World Lean Leadership Conversations in Healthcare and Beyond

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Lean Blog Interviews: Real-World Lean Leadership Conversations features thoughtful, in-depth discussions with leaders, authors, executives, and practitioners who are applying Lean thinking in the real world.