During annual strategy meetings managers use all kinds of statistics, projections, charts, and graphs to support and defend their plans for the upcoming year. Culture, the single biggest determinant in the success or failure of a manager’s plans, rarely, if ever, makes it onto the agenda. Defining a company’s culture and changing it to serve the business is the surest way to ensure plans succeed. Ignoring the impact of culture greatly increases the risk of failure.

Story update 1/14/2010: We substituted the word "empathize" for "sympathize."

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he complex geometries of prosthetics, implants, and specialty medical screws can be measured using typical measurement equipment with only limited success. Prosthetics and implants are becoming more and more complex and delicate. That’s why Stuckenbrock Medizintechnik , in Tuttlingen, Germany, maintains a high level of technology. To be able to produce and inspect very tight tolerances, equipment must meet very high specifications.

To improve customer satisfaction, enhance the quality of services and reduce costs, Peach Regional Medical Center has worked with the Georgia Institute of Technology to adopt process improvement techniques traditionally used by the manufacturing industry. Already, Peach Regional Medical Center’s Emergency Department has noted a 20 percent decrease in average length of stay for its patients.

The purpose of using control charts is to regularly monitor a process so that significant process changes may be detected. These process changes may be a shift in the process average (X-bar) or a change in the amount of variation in the process. The variation observed when the process is operating normally is called “common cause” variation. When a process change occurs, then “special cause” variation occurs.

The financial services sector has been a laggard in adopting lean tools and practices, perhaps because of their manufacturing origins. But those attitudes are slowly changing. As more banks discover the benefits of lean operations—such as lower costs, fewer errors, faster cycle times and far greater efficiency—wide-scale adoption by the industry is just a matter of time. But old habits often die hard, and slowly.