Posted by business901 on November 15, 2011
Bahadir Inozu, Ph.D., the Chief Executive Officer and Dan Chauncey, the Director of Deployment Services for NOVACES joined me in this podcast to discuss an integrated approach for using three industrially based methods, Lean, Six Sigma, and Constraints Management to transform hospital operations. They have just published a book, Performance Improvement for Healthcare
that explains how using the right tool for the right problem at the right time from a systems perspective, the authors show how to deliver faster results and greater return on investment. 
- Scales to any size organization and aligns easily to varying needs
- Shortens traditional execution time from adoption to results
- Optimizes the utilization of resources required to accomplish the desired goals
- Breaks organizational constraints and maximizes organizational efficiency
- Sustains the gains and defines a path to self-sufficiency
- Achieves a global impact through strategy alignment and focused project selection
- Shows how to integrate Constraints Management with Lean and Six Sigma to create a “best of breed” approach
- Explains how hospitals can deploy or re-energize their performance improvement program specifically for what’s most important for their particular organization
About Novaces: A management consulting firm that provides performance management, continuous process improvement (CPI), and project management services to both public and private sector organizations. NOVACES helps its clients build capabilities in today's most effective methodologies to achieve breakthrough operational and financial results.
Posted by business901 on September 26, 2011
Alan is an industry thought leader in Lean, Kanban, product portfolio management, Scrum and agile design. He helps companies transition to Lean and Agile methods enterprise-wide as well teaches courses in these areas. He is the founder and CEO of Net Objectives and also can be found on twitter @alshalloway. 
Alan is the primary author of
Essential Skills for the Agile Developer: A Guide to Better Programming and Design
Lean-Agile Software Development: Achieving Enterprise Agility
Design Patterns Explained: A New Perspective on Object-Oriented Design
And a favorite of mine: Lean-Agile Pocket Guide for Scrum Teams
This podcast is broken down into 3 parts. I had trouble running Alan down and finally caught him on his cell phone so the quality is not the best. However, Alan delivered great content and we could hardly stop talking. His view of the Agile community, Scrum, Kanban and Lean is unique and refreshing.
Part 1 of 3: Alan Shalloway discusses the state of Agile!, part 1 of 3
Related Information:
The Lean Agile Train Software Transcription
Understand Scrum, Understand Implementing PDCA
Lean Architecture: for Agile Software Development
The differences in Lean and Agile
Posted by business901 on September 19, 2011
Alan is an industry thought leader in Lean, Kanban, product portfolio management, Scrum and agile design. He helps companies transition to Lean and Agile methods enterprise-wide as well teaches courses in these areas. He is the founder and CEO of Net Objectives and also can be found on twitter @alshalloway.
Alan is the primary author of
Essential Skills for the Agile Developer: A Guide to Better Programming and Design
Lean-Agile Software Development: Achieving Enterprise Agility
Design Patterns Explained: A New Perspective on Object-Oriented Design
And a favorite of mine: Lean-Agile Pocket Guide for Scrum Teams
This podcast is broken down into 3 parts. I had trouble running Alan down and finally caught him on his cell phone so the quality is not the best. However, Alan delivered some great content and we could hardly stop talking. His view of the Agile community, Scrum, Kanban and Lean is unique and refreshing.
Related Subject discussed in podcast: A transcription of the Business901 Podcast, Should you Manage your Organization with Agile Techniques?. My guest was Steve Denning’s, author of the new book, The Leader’s Guide to Radical Management: Reinventing the Workplace for the 21st Century (Jossey-Bass, 2010).
Related Information:
The Lean Agile Train Software Transcription
Understand Scrum, Understand Implementing PDCA
Lean Architecture: for Agile Software Development
The differences in Lean and Agile
Posted by business901 on August 4, 2011
The Friday Video Series with Dr. Michael Balle, the Gemba Coach at the Lean Enterprise Institute recently competed a two month long series on Kaizen. I have included the entire audio of the conversation as a podcast. Even if you have watched the videos I think you will find it worthwhile. 
Dr. Balle is a multiple Shingo Prize winner as an author of the The Gold Mine and The Lean Manager. His newest Shingo Prize was on the adaption of The Gold Mine: A Novel of Lean Turnaround to an audiobook that features performances by multiple readers who bring its realistic business story and characters to life.
Dr. Michael Balle is the Gemba Coach at the Lean Enterprise Institute
Related Information:
SALES PDCA Framework for Lean Sales and Marketing
Continuous Improvement, The Toyota Way
Marketing with PDCA eBook released on Business901 Website
Lean is not a revolution, Lean is solve one thing and prove one thing!
Posted by business901 on July 25, 2011
Improve Healthcare and Government thru Lean and Six Sigma…You just Gotta Wanna! This was the theme echoed numerous times by my podcast guest, Jay Author of QI Macros. We started out discussing his book, Lean Six Sigma for Hospitals: Simple Steps to Fast, Affordable, and Flawless Healthcare
but soon moved into a discussions that can be applied to any organization.
Jay started many years ago simplifying the Lean Six Sigma process through his early books, Lean Simplified
and Six Sigma Simplified
which eventually led to Lean Six Sigma Demystified: A Self-Teaching Guide
. Jay has always been a master at simplifying these process and reducing the cost of entry into a methodology. His belief is that you can go a long way (5 sigma) by just doing it and utilizing only a few basic tools that he discusses in his money-belt videos. Though I was in introduced to Lean and Six Sigma through other books and people, Jay’s first book on the subject Lean Six Sigma Coloring book was the one I used for the first application I participated in at the manufacturing level.
Jay Arthur works with companies that want to plug the leaks in their cash flow using Lean Six Sigma. Jay is the only improvement specialist that understands and can help you pinpoint areas for improvement in processes, people, and technology. Jay is first and foremost a Money Belt; he knows how to use data to pinpoint broken processes. Jay helps teams understand their communication styles and restore broken connections. Jay has 30 years experience developing software on everything from mainframes to PCs.
Related Information:
Lean Six Sigma for Government
Operational Excellence in Government, is it Possible?
Transforming Healthcare with Lean eBook
Story of Going Lean in Healthcare: On the Mend
Posted by business901 on July 18, 2011
When I first listened to Mike George’s Stong America Now program (BTW: Michael George will be appearing on the Lean Blog Podcast later this week.), I thought it was kind of a joke that hardly made sense. However, I have learned to investigate things that rub me the wrong way initially and many times I have found a little gold in the outcomes. 
One of those outcomes was the opportunity to interview Hundley Elliotte one of the authors of, Building High Performance Government Through Lean Six Sigma: A Leader's Guide to Creating Speed, Agility, and Efficiency
. What I liked about the book was it really removes the issues about can it be done, it is already being done. In the podcast we discussed these places and also discussed the how in applying Lean Six Sigma to any public organization. In fact, I found certain parts of the book remarkably useful for the private sector. Very well written book without the statistical jargon so often found in Lean Six Sigma books. The authors paint a very clear picture of the role of Lean Six Sigma in Government.
Hundley M. Elliotte is the global lead for the Process Performance group within the Accenture Process & Innovation Performance service line. He has more than 15 years of consulting experience, focusing on managing business value, setting strategy, identifying customer needs, and identifying and implementing improvement opportunities in diverse business sectors. Previously, Mr. Elliotte worked for more than a decade in the corporate sector, holding sales, marketing and general management positions with a leading pulp and paper manufacturer and with a plastics company. He is based in Atlanta.
Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, with more than 223,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries.
Read Chapter One, “Building the Anatomy for High Performance”
Read about the Accenture Institute for Health and Public Service.
Related Information:
DMAIC, DMADV, Lean, Six Sigma for Government?
Lean Six Sigma for Government
Lean Six Sigma will increase effectiveness of Stimulus spending
The Hell with the Economic Stimulus Package – I’ll Lead
Balancing Internal and External Lean Six Sigma Consulting Roles
Posted by business901 on June 13, 2011
Steven C. Wilson founded Wilson Consulting and Training Services,Inc (WCTS, Inc) as a process improvement consulting firm. He has dedicated himself to this cause by training over 600 Six Sigma practitioners in over 70 companies in the state of 
Iowa. His training focuses on quality to include Lean, Theory of Constraints, Supply chain, Problem Solving and Six Sigma Green Belt and Black Belt training. Recently, he has developed new approaches to a blended learning platform and is piloting them in his Leadership and Data-Driven Problem Solving Courses. In the podcast with Steve, I came away with a feeling that he looks at his practice more from a training perspective than consulting.
Steve to me is the epitome of today’s successful consultant. He acts as a in-house consultant for a major healthcare facility in the Des Moines, Iowa area, instructs at many of the Iowa Community Colleges, conducts Green Belt and Black Belt training for industry and hosts the Blog Talk Radio Show, Quality Conversations. As a result of this, he speaks on a regular basis throughout the state and has even presided as the Master of Ceremonies at a national iSixSigma Live event. Steve has more offline touch-points than most of us have online touch-points. If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know I am adamant that most business is still done with a handshake. It seems to me that Steve shakes as many hands as a politician and in Iowa there are a lot of hands shaken.
Another unique aspect of Wilson Consulting and Training Services is Steve’s 20 years of experience has been primarily in the service industry. With this background, he offers a unique perspective, even for the more traditional quality venues such as manufacturing. With all industries focusing more and more on the service aspect applying quality improvement tools to this area is typically the quickest ROI an organization can receive.
Related Information:
Steve’s website: Wilson Consulting and Training Services,
Marketing your Black Belt
Sustaining Lean using Continuous Improvement: The Toyota Way
Posted by business901 on May 9, 2011
On the Business901 podcast, Lindsay Jackson Nichols discussed the business benefits of ISO Certification and how it can be used in conjunction with continuous improvement. Lindsay is the CEO of MOCG, a management consulting firm specializing in implementing process improvement and ISO based management systems. 
When you first think about, you may think that Quality Management and a continuous improvement methodology like Lean are one in the same. You may also think that they are willing partners. Many disagree with that thought. My thoughts are that I find the ISO standards as a way to involve people from all departments to ask them how you do things. As a result, procedures and documentation are created to evaluate the current method of doing things (the first step in standard work) against the requirements of a standard (ISO). As a result, you develop performance gaps for continuous improvement. Others believe that this would hinder the development and flexibility of standard work documents and prefer that they are divorced from each other.
I probed this question with Lindsay and on a Lean Blog Post on Standard Work. The answer I believe to be correct is that ISO 9001 should not be the continuous improvement strategy just that it should be one metric by which continuous improvement is measured. However, I still believe using ISO as a standard to start the process of developing standard work is not a bad place to start.
About LJ Nichols: Lindsay’s career has been entirely devoted to management consulting, working with Grant Thornton LLP - the fifth largest accounting and management consulting firm in the nation, assisting them develop a ‘center of excellence’ for their quality, environment and regulatory practice, and P-E International plc/P-E Handley Walker the largest management consulting firm in Europe, where she was integral in establishing their ISO presence in the US.
Related Information:
Agreeing on Standards in a Lean Enterprise
Is Standard Work needed in Sales and Marketing?
Where is the path in Continuous Improvement for Sales and Marketing?
Why does sales and marketing operate to a different quality standard?
Posted by business901 on May 2, 2011
James Franz is the co-author with Jeffrey K. Liker on the latest of the Toyota Way books:The Toyota Way to Continuous Improvement: Linking Strategy and Operational Excellence to Achieve Superior Performance 
. Jim was my guest on the Business901 podcast and if you have been spending your time improving your processes and wondering why they are not giving you the expected returns, this is the podcast for you.
James Franz has over 24 years of manufacturing experience and learned lean as a Toyota Production Engineer in Japan. He started at the Motomachi plant and then moved to NUMMI and then finally worked in Georgetown, Kentucky. After leaving Toyota, he then went to Ford to apply his lean knowledge beginning in production engineering. He was sent to Ford of Australia for 3 years and led their Stamping, Assembly, Casting, and Powertrain facilities to global leadership in lean for Ford. Jim also teaches for the University of Michigan’s Center for Professional Development’s Lean Certification course.
About the Toyota Way Academy: The Academy’s mission is to teach the Toyota Way using the Toyota Way for more information visit: www.toyotawayacademy.com
Related Information:
Coaching Lean eBook with Dr. Liker
Dr. Jeff Liker on PDCA and Lean Culture>
PDCA for Lean Marketing, Knowledge Creation
Understand Scrum, Understand Implementing PDCA
Posted by business901 on April 25, 2011
Posted by business901 on April 11, 2011
These questions may get answered for you when you listen to this podcast.
- Do you think Lean can be applied to Sales and Marketing?
- Do you think Sales and Marketing departments resist becoming Lean?
- How important is Lean to Sales and Marketing?
- Or, how important is Sales and Marketing to Lean?
Erik Haberkern, a General Sales Manger of a global Fortune 300 chemical company discusses the application of Lean in Sales sand Marketing. Eric first worked as a Facility Manager and soon became a Lean Deployment Manager. He transferred those skills to Sales and Marketing. Eric’s credentials are best described in comments by his colleagues: 
- Erik is a true professional in every sense of the word! He helped complete the most successful acetylene Lean project at the Roseville, MN facility.
- Erik's leadership skills are second to none, and he uses these skills to motivate and inspire the people around him. He also understands how to work within a team, to get the most out of the people, and to utilize their strengths in the role to which they belong.
- Among his greatest strengths are his abilities to work with people at all levels within an organization, effective leadership style in motivating others to deliver results, and his promotion of accountability through taking action.
As you listen to the podcast, you can see how true these comments are. Erik follows a very structured team approach in implementing Lean filled with a whole bunch of We’s and few if any I’s, a consummate team player. Eric can be found on LinkedIn.
Related Information:
How to develop a Survey to capture Voice of Market
Can you really use Lean for Marketing? – Dr. Balle
The Future of Marketing is Lean
Why Lean Marketing? Because it is the Future of Marketing …
PDCA for Lean Marketing, Knowledge Creation
Lean Marketing Creates Knowledge for the Customer
Posted by business901 on April 4, 2011
I had the pleasure of discussing the mission and expertise of the Juran Institute, Inc. with their CEO, Joe DeFeo. The Institute provides research and pragmatic solutions to enable organizations from any industry to lean the tools and techniques for managing quality and performance excellence. As a result of this discussion, I think you will take away some different views on the subject of quality and how they apply to your organization. This is not quality for the sake of quality. This is quality for the sake of business improvement. 
The Juran's Quality Handbook: The Complete Guide to Performance Excellence 6/e
, was co-authored by Joe DeFeo and the late Dr. Joseph M. Juran. This authoritative resource shows how to apply universal methods for delivering superior results and organizational excellence in any organization, industry, country or process. In the podcast, Joe will give two people the opportunity to win a copy of the handbook.
P.S. What do you talk about before a podcast begins? I left some beginning remarks. I have to correct our statement in the beginning, WKRP was in Cincinnati.
Upcoming Events: Juran is conducting blended Lean Six Sigma workshops for Green Belt and Black Belt certification beginning in April 2011. The workshops begin with required online independent study of e-learning modules. The estimated 24 hours of independent study must be completed by the start of the onsite, instructor-led portion of the workshop. The onsite workshop training, held in Southbury, Connecticut, will expand upon the topics covered in the e-learning modules. Training will be interactive with group case study exercises, problem analysis and statistics practice. Here is a list of all the workshops Juran currently has scheduled for 2011:
To register, or for more information, please call 800-338-7726, or email Tina@juran.com.
Related Information:
Juran Institute Website
ASQ Columbus Spring Conference will host Marketing with Lean
Need to grow by innovation, consider the little i versus the big I.
Integrating Value Networks
Understand Scrum, Understand Implementing PDCA
Why does sales and marketing operate to a different quality standard?
and many of the problems in implementing Lean. Just the intro and ending was repeated. About 2 minutes on each end.
