May 5 2018
French TV Show Blames Nurse Suicides On “Lean Management” In Hospitals
On September 7, 2017, France2’s Envoyé Spécial (“Special Correspondent”) had a feature about a suicide epidemic among nurses at French public hospitals and blamed it on the adoption of management practices from the private sector, and singled out “Lean Management” as a method from the car industry that resulted in treating patients like cars and nurses like assembly line workers. It went on to explain that it was Ford’s system “from the 1930s,” dressed up by Toyota with a few Japanese words.
Besides the reporters’ inability to get basic facts — Ford’s system is not from the 1930s and Toyota’s is not a copy of it — I don’t recognize here any of the approaches I have heard from colleagues involved in health care, like Mark Graban, Pascal Dennis, or Katie Anderson, and it doesn’t match my experience as a patient in a healthcare network that has had an active Lean program for four years. Mostly, what I have noticed is less waiting when I show up for appointments, friendlier staff, and enhanced online services, including communications with doctors.
May 9 2018
Inside Toyota’s Giant Kentucky Factory | Willy Shih | Forbes
“Japanese Production Techniques, Made In America. Last month I had the opportunity to visit the Toyota facto y in Georgetown, Kentucky, which is the largest vehicle assembly plant in Toyota’s global production network. I had last visited Georgetown 15 years ago, and the site has grown considerably since then. At 8.1 million square feet, it is the largest vehicle assembly plant in Toyota’s global production network. Not only can it produce 550,000 vehicles per year, it can make more than 600,000 engines annually.”
Sourced from Forbes
Michel Baudin‘s comments: Besides the above picture and the lead paragraph, there is essentially nothing in this article that couldn’t have been written without setting foot in the plant, which is disappointing from a publication like Forbes. For informative reports on factory tours, see Christoph Roser’s Grand Tour of Japanese Automotive Factories.
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By Michel Baudin • Press clippings, Uncategorized • 2