Cleveland Clinic and their lean efforts are featured in this U.S. News and World Report article with the subtitle "How the Cleveland Clinic is applying manufacturing principles to improve patient care."

From the article:

"That transformation is part of an unusual effort to bring the best practices of manufacturing to the hospital setting. Over the past five years, the clinic has assembled a 50-person team focused solely on "continuous improvement," or Kaizen, the Japanese word for "making things better." Most of the team members are engineers with experience far removed from healthcare. The efficiency experts quickly found out why healthcare isn't just another industry. Whereas higher profits might be the unambiguous goal at a corporation, doctors and nurses were not about to embrace any change that improved work flow without proof that it wouldn't lower the quality of care. "You cannot issue an edict," says team director Darryl Greene, who arrived at the clinic after a career spent improving processes at appliance makers and financial institutions. "You have to sell each doctor on the value, using data and results."

John Toussaint, MD, author of the book On the Mend: Revolutionizing Healthcare to Save Lives and Transform the Industry, was on "The Lean Nation" radio show with "Captain Karl" Wadensten talking about Lean Healthcare.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer talks with GrafTech International Chairman and CEO Craig Shular about the lean journey at the global maker of graphite industrial products and about Shular's participation in a recent kaizen event.

A PDF of the A3 template provided in the book Managing to Learn.