Carlos Villela’s blog lixo.org has a great story about simple solutions. I really have no idea if it is true or not – indeed, a couple of the details don’t hang together. On the other hand, I have seen for myself the kind of thinking that is described in this story. Link to full story: [...]
This article on NPR is chiefly about the dilemma that hospital administrators are facing as escalating government reporting requirements are being tied to their Medicare payments. (For my non-US readers, Medicare is the U.S. government medical insurance program for seniors and retirees. It pays a huge portion of hospital’s revenue, and thus, its policies carry [...]
PC posted a really interesting bit of visual control history in the forums. Click on the link to read his whole post, there is a second part about lack of visual controls. In a recently aired episode of Showdown: Air Combat the host, a USAF fighter jock, asked about a series of colored stripes painted on [...]
“3P” is not a Toyota term. The workshop structure was taught by Shingijutsu and is now being propagated by people who learned it while working in their client companies. The most visible characteristic of 3P, the Production Preparation Process, is the idea of creating quick and dirty mock-ups of the product and the process. These [...]
Travel plans sometimes come together at the last minute. I went to the green company’s web site to rent a car, and got a message saying the site was down for maintenance. It said to please call the 800 number if I wanted to make a reservation. I called the number. The nice person on [...]
Boeing’s “PTQ” (Put Together Quickly) videos show a time lapse of an airliner in production. They have been producing the for years – certainly since I was working there. This one, though, shows something a little special. When I first started working there, the idea of a line stop was unthinkable. The plane moved on [...]
Today was traveling on behest of a large corporation, so the travel arrangements were made through them. It all went about as routinely as could be expected on the last weekend before Christmas… for me. Unfortunately the guy I am supposed to meet here had flights going through D.C. that were on a collision trajectory [...]
This news piece, America’s Best Hospitals: The 2009-10 Honor Roll, originally got my attention because I hoped someone might be actually be paying attention to the things that make a real difference in our national debate about health care. Unfortunately, it looks like more of the same. This survey looks at things like technical capability [...]
Whether in service delivery (including health care delivery), manufacturing, or any other production environment, your team members are likely having to make lots of decisions under perceived time pressure. Even with great visual aids, many of these processes are mistake-prone. One of the reasons I like pre-kitting parts for a specific option configuration is that [...]
My main desktop computer runs Ubuntu Linux. The default email client is called Evolution. A recent upgrade introduced a very cool feature. When I hit “Send” it looks for language in the email that might indicate I meant to include an attachment. If there is no attachment, it pops up this handy reminder: Maybe Microsoft [...]