DFWLean meetup

Join us as lean expert and well known lean blogger Mark Graban (http://www.markgraban.com/) brings the lean manufacturing, lean healthcare, and lean startup methodologies together.

While “lean” originated in manufacturing as the Toyota Production System, the ideas are seen by many as being universal and transferable. Resistance to the spread of these concepts took many forms over the last 20 years since the publication of the seminal work, The Machine That Changed the World (http://books.google.com/books?id=8pCElwGZhSUC&printsec=frontcover&dq=machine+that+changed+the+world), that coined the term “lean production.” Automakers in the U.S. complained that they were not Japanese (although lean has been proven to work in countries around the world). Other manufacturers assumed that lean would not work because their products were more complicated, such as airplanes, or they were not high-volume manufacturers. As lean has spread and understanding of Toyota has advanced over the last 30 years, people increasingly see that lean is not a collection of tools to be copied; rather, it is a holistic management system and a specific type of organizational culture that is a significant improvement over what some might describe as “traditional MBA thinking.” Lean has spread into the non-factory functions of manufacturers, into service industries such as banking and Starbucks, and increasingly into healthcare over the last 10 years. Critics often mis-state lean principles or highlight cases of “lean done wrong” or what has been described as L.A.M.E. (http://www.leanblog.org/tag/lame/) or “Lean As Misguidedly Executed” – an admittedly awkward acronym coined by this month’s speaker. Organizations that mindlessly force tools on employees, use lean to drive layoffs, or focus on speed over quality, give “Real Lean” (a term coined by author Bob Emiliani (http://bobemiliani.com/)) a bad name. DFWLean welcomes Mark Graban, a blogger, author, and consultant for healthcare organizations that are embracing the Lean philosophy. Mark will share his experiences working with hospitals after beginning his career in the manufacturing sector. Starting the talk with a vivid case example from a hospital, we will have an informal discussion about the role of systems and processes in delivering quality, as well as the critical nature of a management system and culture in lean transformation efforts. Expect a robust discussion about the proper, thoughtful transfer of methods from one industry to another, including software and “lean startups.”