Lean Blog

A Free Red Bead Game Simulator: Try Dr. Deming’s Experiment Online

Mark Graban — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 21:07:59 +0000

A hospital VP I worked with once told her board the number of infections had dropped from 4 to 3. She got a small round of congratulations. The next quarter, it went to 5, and she had to explain what went wrong. What had changed? Nothing had changed. Infections are bad. But the exact numbers, the performance–they were “noise” in a stable system. That's the part most leaders never quite see. The infection numbers were […]

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Did Ford’s Andon Cord Problem Ever Get Fixed? Help Me Find Out.

Mark Graban — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 02:19:09 +0000

In 2007, I wrote about a BBC article that included a number I've never quite been able to shake. Workers at Toyota's Georgetown, Kentucky plant were pulling the andon cord – the mechanism that lets any worker stop the line when they spot a problem – about 2,000 times a week. Workers at a brand-new Ford truck plant in Dearborn, Michigan, were pulling it twice. The BBC framed the gap as “generations of mistrust” between […]

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New Book Announcement: Psychological Safety for Lean Leaders — Vote on the Title

Mark Graban — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 19:53:32 +0000

I haven't said much about this here yet, so consider this the announcement. I'm writing a new book. It's a practical guide for Lean leaders, continuous improvement professionals, and anyone who's ever wondered why their problem-solving training didn't produce more problem-solving. The working subtitle, at least for now, is “Make It Safe to Speak Up, So Improvement Can Actually Happen.” The Argument, in Short Most Lean transformations don't stall because the methodology is wrong. They […]

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Why You Can’t Think Your Way to a Root Cause

Mark Graban — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 08:58:00 +0000

You know the feeling in the conference room when the team finally lands it. The fishbone is covered in sticky notes. You've worked through five whys, or ten, or fifteen. Somebody on the team traces the line with a finger and says, “There it is. That's the root cause.” Heads nod. Pens cap. A warm, settled feeling comes over the room. We figured it out. That feeling is the most dangerous thing in the building. […]

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Staff Had Concerns: What a Surgeon’s Manslaughter Charge Tells Us About Speaking Up

Mark Graban — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 09:32:00 +0000

A Florida surgeon, Thomas Shaknovsky, was indicted on a second-degree manslaughter charge on April 13. The charge followed the death of William Bryan, a 70-year-old Alabama man, during what was supposed to be a laparoscopic splenectomy in August 2024. Instead of removing Bryan's spleen, the surgeon removed his liver. The patient hemorrhaged and died on the operating table. There's a lot to say about this case. Becker's Hospital Review covered the basics. CBS News, NBC […]

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Warning: Signs! Mistake-Proofing Is More Effective Than Warnings

Mark Graban — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 08:26:00 +0000

At the 2024 KaiNexicon (the KaiNexus user conference), I gave a talk called “Warning: Signs! From Cautionary Commands to Proactive Prevention” — a tour through the world of warning signs, why they don't work very well, and what we can do instead. The talk was meant to be fun. I collected photos of signs from hospitals, gas stations, hotels, and even the banks of the Ohio River. But the underlying point is serious: when we […]

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Ryan McCormack’s Operational Excellence Mixtape: April 17, 2026

Ryan McCormack — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 11:53:26 +0000

Thanks, as always, to Ryan McCormack for this. He always shares so much good reading, listening, and viewing here! Subscribe to get these directly from Ryan via email. News, articles, books, podcasts, and videos about how to make the workplace better. Ryan McCormack's April 17 Mixtape gathers pieces on AI adoption (meet people where they are; elevate human judgment rather than eliminate it), the trap of chasing a single “optimal” answer in complex organizations, and […]

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The 8 Wastes of Lean: A Practical Guide (With Healthcare Examples)

Mark Graban — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 08:34:00 +0000

TL;DR: The eight wastes give you a lens for seeing problems — but Lean isn't a scavenger hunt for waste. The real work is understanding why waste exists and building systems where people feel safe enough to point it out. My friend and mentor Pascal Dennis, who worked at Toyota in Canada and has been a deeply thoughtful teacher of Lean principles, once said something that has stuck with me: Lean is not a “scavenger […]

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