From Vietnam to Boeing
I arrived at Boeing in 1978, at a time when the aerospace industry was doing well, and I brought with me some perspectives I had developed during my service in the US Army, including two tours in Vietnam. With the Army, I had conducted my own research into waste—specifically, waste in war—and I soon discovered that many of the same concepts applied to the corporate realm. Not long after I started my Boeing career, the company began examining—and attempting to apply—the “total quality” teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming and Dr. Joseph Juran, which had played such an important role in making Japanese industry competitive.
Boeing leaders were making speeches about our 60 percent market share, our number-one position in the world, and the fact that rival Airbus could never catch us. When I looked at our performance metrics, however, I found the figures mediocre. I believed that, to move Boeing to the next level of performance, we needed to go to Japan to study world-class companies and then create a new vision for Boeing.
I walked the halls telling anyone who would listen that just because we had 60 percent market share for commercial airliners didn’t mean we had world-class metrics. It was a tough sell.
I walked the halls telling anyone who would listen that just because we had 60 percent market share for commercial airliners didn’t mean we had world-class metrics. It was a tough sell.
Eventually, Bruce Gissing listened. In early 1990, with Gissing’s insistence and leadership, a team of Boeing executives who were involved in the quality effort embarked on our first study mission to Japan. The trip itself lasted two weeks, and to put it mildly, participants’ eyes were opened. As one manager commented, “Thank God Toyota is not in the aerospace industry.”
Training for 100,000 employees and managers was completed in 24 months—a rate unheard of in a corporation the size of Boeing. From 1994 to 1996, defects in production were reduced 35 percent, and customer complaints dropped accordingly. Where applied, Lean reduced the typical floor space required for operations by 50 percent and cut the amount of inventory kept on hand by 30 to 70 percent (Boeing Company 1997).
Training for 100,000 employees and managers was completed in 24 months—a rate unheard of in a corporation the size of Boeing. From 1994 to 1996, defects in production were reduced 35 percent, and customer complaints dropped accordingly. Where applied, Lean reduced the typical floor space required for operations by 50 percent and cut the amount of inventory kept on hand by 30 to 70 percent (Boeing Company 1997).
Transition to Healthcare
Going outside Boeing, I recruited organizational development consultant Joanne Poggetti, who worked with Boeing statisticians and candidates representing all the company’s major functional organizations for an intensive, two-year learn/do experience. Everyone was sent to off-site seminars conducted personally by Dr. Deming, Dr. Juran, and Bill Conway of Conway Quality.
When the team members came back, Joanne had the assignment to design and launch 18 quality improvement courses and seminars that would be attended by more than 34,000 employees.
So, I wasn’t looking for business in healthcare when it came to me on that flight to Atlanta in the fall of 2000. But fate was already playing its hand. My wife, Joanne Poggetti, who had worked with Dr. W. Edwards Deming, had started her own consulting firm while I was still with Boeing. In 1996, she had signed a contract with a healthcare system and started them on the road to Lean, with consultation support from me, after the system’s CEO heard me speak. That October, Poggetti became the first person to take a group of healthcare CEOs to Japan to attend Shingijutsu’s gemba kaizen at Hitachi.
My years guiding Lean implementations in healthcare had begun, almost without me realizing it, just as a few leading healthcare organizations became ready for transformative change.
In 2000, Mike Rona, then president of Virginia Mason Medical Center, sat next to me on a plane. We started talking. I said, “Mike you have to see this pitch about Lean that I’m going to present to the Minister of Health in Spain.’ Rona listened patiently. When we got off the plane I handed him my first book, “A World Class Production System,” recently published by Boeing. He didn’t forget our conversation. He shared the information and the book with his boss, CEO Gary Kaplan. As a result, JBA spent 6 years helping Virginia Mason get started with Lean. VMMC is now an acknowledged world leader in healthcare.
When the team members came back, Joanne had the assignment to design and launch 18 quality improvement courses and seminars that would be attended by more than 34,000 employees.
So, I wasn’t looking for business in healthcare when it came to me on that flight to Atlanta in the fall of 2000. But fate was already playing its hand. My wife, Joanne Poggetti, who had worked with Dr. W. Edwards Deming, had started her own consulting firm while I was still with Boeing. In 1996, she had signed a contract with a healthcare system and started them on the road to Lean, with consultation support from me, after the system’s CEO heard me speak. That October, Poggetti became the first person to take a group of healthcare CEOs to Japan to attend Shingijutsu’s gemba kaizen at Hitachi.
My years guiding Lean implementations in healthcare had begun, almost without me realizing it, just as a few leading healthcare organizations became ready for transformative change.
In 2000, Mike Rona, then president of Virginia Mason Medical Center, sat next to me on a plane. We started talking. I said, “Mike you have to see this pitch about Lean that I’m going to present to the Minister of Health in Spain.’ Rona listened patiently. When we got off the plane I handed him my first book, “A World Class Production System,” recently published by Boeing. He didn’t forget our conversation. He shared the information and the book with his boss, CEO Gary Kaplan. As a result, JBA spent 6 years helping Virginia Mason get started with Lean. VMMC is now an acknowledged world leader in healthcare.
Since then, I’ve helped other healthcare organizations, most recently the province of Saskatchewan in Canada.
Through my work with healthcare organizations, I’ve been able to apply my Lean learnings to a cause I’m passionate about: ending preventable deaths. My goal is to help organizations put systems in place that eliminate medical errors. Fewer errors means higher quality care, lower costs, and zero preventable deaths.