The best line is the last line in this story at Purchasing analyzing the latest supplier relations activities at Chrysler and Toyota: "Supplier relations are as much about listening as they are about talking or buying”

Lean Thinkers and analysts, including Lean Enterprise Institute Founder Jim Womack comment on Toyota's quality crisis and its impact on the lean management movement. (Posted at Fortune.com)

To respond more effectively to future safety and quality problems, Toyota must learn to trust non-Japanese leaders, delegate more authority to them and decentralize decision-making, say people who've worked with and for the Japanese automaker.

David Drickhamer at the Lean ROI web site summarizes the key points of a keynote speech at LEI's 2010 Lean Transformation Summit by Phil Coley, managing director of aircraft maintenance at FedEx Express. Among the benefits Coley cited was cutting C-checks at the FedEx Los Angeles facility from 32,715 man-hours  to 21,535 man-hours in six months, saving $2 million, excluding parts, per check. The added capacity let the facility bring in more work.

This Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA) article features a number of organizations, including ThedaCare.

ThedaCare's results from using lean methods in radiology oncology included:

• A $900,000 increase in gross revenue from 2008 to 2009 and a 24 percent increase in gross revenue since the initiative began in the department in 2006
• A 63 percent reduction since 2006 in wait time from referral to treatment, down to six business days
•  A 30 percent improvement in productivity
• The ability to improve revenue and productivity without laying off staff (and to provide raises to staff last year)

A key part of the success was their realization that reaching the 95th percentile in productivity was not enough, that they pushed to make a serious impact on improving patient care.

Jim Womack. LEI founder and chairman, does a video interview with Allison Myers of Lantech after a visit and gemba walk at the stretch wrapper maker. He answers questions about whether Toyota’s recall crisis has given lean management a “black eye”; what is lean community plan-do-check-act; what is lean thinking; and his impressions of Lantech’s lean journey from “being on fire with tools” in 1993 to its current lean management system.