Comment from former Toyota leader Steve St. Angelo:

The number one point that I got from your article is that you worked with Larry Spiegal. He truly understood and got it. All and all great post. One thing to remember, the purpose of Andon is not to stop the line but to keep the line running. How? By fixing problems and highlighting issues early. Never pass on a defect. Safety-Quality-then Quantity

2) The 1-2 year expectation for significant results to be realized is always unrealistic. As a yardstick for judging success or failure of organizational change, it comes more from the realm of fantasy than reality. Few leaders have the capability to drive that level of change that rapidly. Dr. Deming suggested time frames of 10 or more years.

3) Managers and observers who do not understand variation often want to evaluate a change effort before the system has ceased to produce special causes of variation. If the system is not yet stable, one cannot evaluate its performance.

Thanks for listening and for the kind words about the podcast and my first book.

Thanks so much for listening all these years Andy and thank you for all of the effort that it took back then. I remember pre-iPhone days when I would have to download Podcasts to a dedicated MP3 player! It’s so much easier now.

Congratulations on this accomplishment! I didn’t get on board until a few years after you started (maybe 2009), but thank you for all that you have shared with your audiences. I was especially drawn to your work with hospitals. While making things is great, I couldn’t think of something more important than helping save lives and improving the lives of those that provide that care. As the son of a now retired nurse, I watched my mom do the thing that she loved and eventually it turned into something that was less about caring for people and more for completing paperwork and navigating convoluted systems. I have learned so much from your work, and I am grateful that you have made this one of your missions…and my signed copy of Lean Hospitals. Best wishes for continued success and continually spreading the word and inviting others to share their experiences with us all.

Jim Gatto

Thanks for reading and commenting, Sid.

I totally agree. When I teach about how best to react to mistakes (and learn from them), trying to proactively prevent them is the other side of the coin.

We can’t just wait for every mistake that could harm a patient to occur. We need to think through what COULD happen and try to design the system so that the mistake is impossible.

I like the car and train examples. I still don’t understand why airport taxiways and runways don’t have physical barriers to prevent incursion mistakes. They rely, instead, on traffic lights and verbal communication. And mistakes still occur because the system isn’t fully mistake proofed.

Thanks for adding that history and those stories, Andy!