CASE STUDY – Thanks to Lean Thinking, this Spanish construction company was able to deliver a challenging project in one year, well ahead of schedule. Here’s how they did it.
INTERVIEW - The Food&Beverage department of the Gran Tacande Hotel in Tenerife has been using a powerful visual management tool to effectively visualize and track the variables impacting the work flow.
FEATURE - This surgery department was among the first areas in this hospital (maybe in the whole of Spain) to adopt Lean Thinking. Here's what their lean journey is focusing on more than 10 years after they started.
CASE STUDY – Catalonia’s largest hospital is undergoing a successful transformation – supported by pioneering hoshin experiments – that has already turned it into a poster child for lean healthcare in the region.
INTERVIEW – A 22-people veterinarian hospital in Barcelona has recently turned to lean thinking. We caught up with the owner to learn how things have changed six months into the journey.
FEATURE – At a recent Lean Day, our editor was reminded of the immense potential of Lean Thinking applied to government. After a few sleepy years, is lean in the public administration having a comeback?
INTERVIEW – Earlier this month, we attended a Lean Day at Dreamplace Hotels and Resorts in the Canary Islands. We sat down with two lean leaders to discuss the transformations of their businesses.
INTERVIEW – Three hotel directors from the same chain in the Canary Islands give us the lowdown on the company’s strategy to facilitate the transfer of lean knowledge from one location to another.
FEATURE – Dreamplace Hotels in Tenerife have been on an improvement journey for several years, but only recently did they find a way to truly become a learning organization: lean thinking.
INTERVIEW – The Consorci Sanitari del Garraf, a Catalan hospital PL has come to know well over the past few years, just won an Honorable Mention award at the World Hospital Congress.
FEATURE - It took a Spanish clinical diagnostics instruments manufacturer the introduction of a new product to realize how an old-fashioned system and management style were preventing the company from thriving.
CASE STUDY – How do you give hundreds of primary care units the tools and knowledge they need to make improvements? The Catalan Health Service found the solution in hoshin kanri.
FEATURE – With lean thinking, Madrid-based Neo@Ogilvy is hoping to create a stronger connection with customers, thus learning to create value for them and redefining the overall purpose of marketing.
FEATURE – This Siemens Group-owned medium-sized manufacturer of electrical low-voltage devices has been experimenting with hoshin kanri. In this article, they share their experience and lessons learned.
FEATURE – How did lean healthcare organizations respond to the most critical stage of the epidemic? We asked three hospitals in Catalonia and Toledo to share their experience.
VIDEO – The director of a hotel in Tenerife explains the first steps the team is taking to develop a lean daily management system, and how this connects to the organization's hoshin.
VIDEO - The director of a hotel in the Canary Islands explains the hoshin efforts taking place in the organization and takes us through the lean strategy deployment boards she uses to track progress and highlight problems.
THE LEAN BAKERY – In the fourth episode in our video series, the CEO of 365 explains how lean showed him that his business could grow (exponentially) without using any extra resources.
THE LEAN BAKERY – In this video, a shop coordinator explains how the 365 bakeries were able to speed up service to customers and ensure product quality by reorganizing work and responsibilities.
THE LEAN BAKERY - For the past decade, lean has fuelled the growth of a chain of cafes/bakeries in Barcelona. With 100 now open, the Retail Manager explains how lean helps them manage a booming business.
INTERVIEW – For the past year, agricultural equipment manufacturer John Deere Ibérica has worked to spread lean thinking to the supply chain. We met with them in Madrid to understand how they’re going about it.
OPINION – When thinking about Barcelona, most of us think of Gaudí’s architecture, tapas and beach weather, but the Catalonian capital might also be a worthy example of lean principles applied to city management.
INTERVIEW – Planet Lean speaks with telecommunications company Telefónica about the organization's attempt to apply lean startup principles in its R&D department.
ARTICLE – The Institut de Medicina Legal de Catalunya has learned that employee engagement and lean thinking can shake up even the stiffest of the public sector's working environments.
VIDEO INTERVIEW – This hotel in the Canary Islands is bringing lean to its Kitchen Department, hoping to streamline the process and provide a better service to diners.
FEATURE – Freeing up beds is an age-old problem for hospitals. The medical area of this Catalan hospital group has found in lean a creative way to solve it.
FEATURE – The ER of this Catalan hospital is finding great value in the application of Lean Thinking, which has already led to a dramatic change in its processes and to better care for patients.
CASE STUDY – The Hospital de Bellvitge in Barcelona is relying heavily on hoshin and Kata to create a working environment based on collaboration and joint problem solving.
FEATURE – A senior executive of a Spanish hotel chain shares an example of how the organization’s management system and visual tools have changed over time.
FEATURE – Thanks to lean, a primary care unit in Catalonia has streamlined its blood sampling process, improving the patient experience and the life at work for its staff.
FEATURE – This nurses-led experiment in Barcelona’s Hospital Clinic is proving successful in getting more patients discharged on time and avoiding surgery cancellations.
INTERVIEW – Juan Pedro Gonzalez is a pioneer of lean in hospitality, having spearheaded the transformation of Spain’s Dreamplace hotels since the beginning. Here, he discusses what role lean can play in advancing the industry.
CASE STUDY – Combining the lean and agile methodologies, HP’s site in Barcelona has streamlined and greatly improved its product development. Along the way, they transformed their culture, too.
CASE STUDY – This packaging company in Catalonia has been able to cleverly balance the resolution of urgent problems and the advancement of the lean transformation. But what to do when the burning platform is no more?
CASE STUDY – This Barcelona hospital began its journey with ambitious projects and is starting to see the fruits of its labor, with the pandemic acting as an unexpected but powerful catalyst for change.
CASE STUDY – This hotel in Spain has been able to leverage Lean Thinking in its restaurant to successfully adapt to the new Covid-19 regulations enforced in the country, becoming more efficient along the way.
CASE STUDY – Not even a pandemic can prevent a lean organization from learning: this hotel in Tenerife has decided to make the most of its forced closure to review and improve its processes.
FEATURE – By looking at two practical examples, the authors discuss the cognitive shift towards learning and continuous improvement that takes place in a lean transformation.
CASE STUDY – What to do when you operate in a competitive market and are located in a remote corner of Europe, thousands of miles from your customer? One word: lean.
OPINION – The team at Instituto Lean Management in Barcelona comments on recent news from the Catalan healthcare sector and reflects on lean sustainability.
CASE STUDY – This automotive parts supplier based in southwest Spain is discovering the power of lean thinking applied to recruitment and Human Resources.
FEATURE – By leveraging lean product and process development principles, Nichirin Spain is becoming more flexible managing last-minute changes in product design requested by customers.
THE LEAN BAKERY – In this episode of our video series, we visit 365's super-lean workshop, where small batches and a clever use of space allow for unprecedented levels of flexibility in manufacture.
THE LEAN BAKERY – In the second video in the series, we visit the stock-free workshop of one of 365's lean bakeries and learn about quality bread, customer focus and making lives easier for bakers.
PROFILE – Lean is spreading like wildfire across the Catalonian healthcare sector, following a do-it-yourself model unique to this part of the world. Our editor met one of the practitioners who are making it happen.
VIDEO CASE STUDY – In the past couple of years, the Consorci Sanitari del Garraf has been able to leverage the commitment of its people to perform a lean turnaround. Its story shows you don’t need lots of resources and money to do lean in a hospital.
CASE STUDY – A very lean system that runs like clockwork and constant attention to customer service enable Barcelona-based 365.café to achieve the impossible: supplying 55 bakeries out of a 650-sqm factory.
CASE STUDY - In the past two years, the Consorci Sanitari del Garraf near Barcelona experienced a lean turnaround. The author gives us an overview of the key building blocks of this transformation.
FEATURE – Over the course of his career in the wind energy industry, the author has learned the power of horizontal integration in the improvement of organizations. In this piece, he shares his experience as a lean practitioner and leader at Ecotècnia.
CASE STUDY - Through the involvement of front line staff, Hartmann’s production plant near Barcelona is paving the way for an expansion into different markets and inspiring the adoption of lean across the multinational.
FEATURE – You don’t always need a lot of external help to initiate a lean transformation: the experience of the Emergency Department of the Hospital Clínic of Barcelona shows it can be done with very little support from the outside.
COLUMN - In the third article of our series, the CEO of a healthcare institution in Catalonia, Spain, discusses the implementation of lean as a mindset that has its foundations in continuous improvement.
