Lean Article Index

• 10 Random Tips to Supercharge You On Your Lean Journey (Webinar Recording)

  Tim McMahon and I recently presented a webinar full of tips that can help you really speed up your progress on your Lean journey. The tips include: Go to the Gemba Watch and Listen to What People Really Say Develop Your People Find Little, Insta...

• 12 Predictions about Lean in 2011

  With the New Year coming soon, I've been thinking a lot about what the future has in store. I am anticipating some major changes for Lean. Some of these predictions are US focused, but most are internationally applicable. Lean will continue to gro...

• 12 Ways to Start Building a Continuous Improvement Culture

  Creating an organization that embraces continuous improvement is not easy. It takes strong, committed leaders who are willing to pay the up-front costs, and who resist the urge to harvest gains at the expense of future improvements. It takes a team tha...

• 13 Ways to Apply Lean Principles to a Small Business

  A lot of people register on my site to get access to the wide range of free Lean information I offer. Some of the organizations they work for are easily recognizable as Fortune 500 companies. But many of the visitors to my site come from companies that...

• 17 Lessons I Learned from Japanese Consultants

  Over the years, I have worked with some premiere Lean consultants from Japan. Here are some of the many lessons I learned from them... Watch before asking. Observe a process before asking any questions about it. You'll prevent biasing what you see. ...

• 3 Ways to Sneak Lean into Your Company

  Let's face it. To the person unfamiliar with Lean, it sounds like just another way to squeeze a little more out of workers. When people hear there's something coming that can get waste out of the workplace, they worry about layoffs. And the concept tha...

• 5 Why Analysis-Lean Training Video

  I’ve gotten another Lean video rolled out. This one is on the 5 Whys. If you are not familiar with it, the tool is useful for diving down to the root cause of a problem. Please take a look at it and let me know what you think. Rating it well on YouT...

• 6 Ways to Improve Problem Solving in Your Company

  At its core, much of continuous improvement is about problem solving. Tools such as Standard Work, policy deployment, kanbans, and andons are all really just pre-packaged solutions to common problems. Despite that focus on resolving issues, few people...

• 7 Tips to Build Good (Lean) Behavior

  My dad lives in the Chicago area. His house has been buried in multiple snowstorms over the course of this winter. A few weeks back, he was driving somewhere during the time when the kids in his neighborhood were walking to school. Along one of the art...

• 8 Reasons People Resist Change (+Video)

  Improvement, by definition, requires altering behaviors. And since most people show a reluctance to change, it follows that improvement efforts can be an uphill battle. Let's start by addressing 8 of the major reasons why people resist change. Fear...

• 8 Ways to Develop Winning Teams in Lean Organizations (Webinar Recording)

  Developing a winning team is critical to the success of a Lean organization. That's because a strong continuous improvement culture demands the involvement of people throughout the organization. And people won’t want to take on that responsibility if...

• 9 Steps to Better Metrics

  As I talk about making improvements, I invariably end up telling people they need focus more on their processes. Time and time again, just the simple act of gaining a deeper understanding of how work is done will shed light on what to improve. The spot...

• 9 Steps to Developing a Daily Management System (+Video)

  Running an effective operation takes a daily management system. To get one up and running, Lean leaders have to: Identify the demand. This means tracking data for a while to see what your customers are asking you to do. (Hint: Pivot tables are your ...

• 9 Tips to Make Your Kaizen Process More Effective

  If you are in a Lean company, you probably already have a fairly well defined kaizen process. After all, an effective kaizen is one of the most powerful continuous improvement tools in your Lean kit. Like all things, though, your kaizen process prob...

• 9 Words That Kill Lean Progress

  As a Lean consultant, I have identified several words over the years that immediately make me see red flags with a process. When I hear them, I immediately start snooping around a little deeper, and often uncover some great opportunities for improvemen...

• A Bad Employee Attitude Resonates Throughout an Organization

  As I was packing to get ready for a training session, I came across a new dilemma. I recently switched back to using an electric razor. As I was contemplating where to pack it, it brought me back to a time, years ago, when I was a young lieutenant in t...

• A Common Lean Problem: Mismatched Expectations

  I am an aspiring golfer who plays less than half a dozen rounds of golf a year. (My translation of aspiring means I have been golfing for a long time without any real improvement.) To gain some perspective about my skills, the average golf score in the...

• A Healthcare Poka Yoke Against MRSA

  In the latest issue of Men's Health magazine, there is a little blurb about MRSA resistant paint. In testing, all MRSA bacteria died after 20 minutes of exposure to the painted surface. [caption id="attachment_10945" align="aligncenter" width="3...

• A Hundred Million People Just Went 'Huh?'

  I have to admit I am a fan of seeing what Google puts up on its site. I like seeing the creativity. So, I have to ask the question, is this a joke, or is this a quality problem? (I grabbed this image at about 11:20ish PST, 9/26/09) I'm leanin...

• A Lean Prognostication

  Because I have a bit of an uncommon working situation, it can be interesting when people ask what I do for a living. I can say I own a business, that I’m a consultant, that I’m an author, that I do corporate training, or that I run an online store....

• A Paradox of Lean: Job Control Rises and Falls at the Same Time

  I have an old stack of articles that I peruse from time to time to give me blog idea. One of my best sources is Men's Health. It is surprising how often the little tidbits of information the magazine offers strike a chord with me. In this instance, ...

• Abnormal Conditions and Parking Lots

  I was walking through a parking lot today, and for some reason, I noticed the puddles of oil in the center of every parking space. Not an uncommon occurrence, but it got me thinking about abnormal conditions. If your car was leaking oil, could you tel...

• An Overlooked Benefit of Kaizen Events

  Everybody sees kaizen events as an opportunity to make an improvement. Most people also see them as an opportunity to train teams. But few regard them as a way to identify the future leaders of the company. Employees working in frontline production ro...

• Andon: Lean Superhero

  I had a rather random thought this morning. It would not be much fun to work with a superhero, especially one with super-speed. Imagine the conversation with your boss. "Jeff, you've been doing OK, but you just can't seem to keep up with the day shi...

• Are You Driven to Learn Lean? (Webinar Recording)

  Most people see the automotive industry as a great way to show how to apply Lean concepts to your organization, but your own car can also provide valuable insight into the application of Lean tools. In this video, Tim McMahon of A Lean Journey and I d...

• Are You Kidding Me? You Call That a Metric?

  I've been trying to improve my overall fitness. Fortunately, it just got easier for me. Pizza and fries are now officially healthy choices. Congress has confirmed that both count as vegetables in school lunches. I am going to increase my consumption of...

• Attitude, Employee Behavior, Customer Service, and Lean

  So, I was thinking about my post from yesterday on customer service and retention and wanted to add another point. I really didn't talk about the attitude of the employee at the front desk-the voice of the company. Now, she was civil to me. There wa...

• Be Flexible in Your Kaizen Project

  The success of a kaizen project is closely correlated to its proper, thorough planning. But there is also a need to avoid going into a kaizen project with pre-conceived notions of specific changes. Those two opposing factors can create a situation w...

• Be Happy. It Pays. And It Could Save Your Life.

  I was leafing through a folder of interesting articles I clip to give me ideas for my writing, and came across a Men’s Health clip from a few years ago. The story doesn’t provide numbers, but it quotes ‘studies’ that show some of the benefit...

• Benchmark Lean: Difficulties Copying the Toyota Production System. Lean TPS Information.

  To some, Toyota might seem surprisingly open with its Lean TPS information. After all, Lean TPS is the primary reason for Toyota's success and recent dominance in the auto industry. Why wouldn't they guard their secrets? Even more, why would the give a...

• Benefit of Lean: Is Lean Really Easier?

  Let me ask you this question about the benefit of Lean. Is jogging a mile harder than sprinting a quarter mile? That's the basic problem with pitching Lean as making a job easier. It's not always an apples-to-apples comparison. Sure, Lean mak...

• Benefits, Lean or Otherwise, Depend on Perspective

  When managers explain Lean to their employees, they always list the benefits. Lean improves productivity. It makes quality better. It gets products out the door faster. All true. But despite those benefits, Lean sometimes makes employees dissatis...

• BLUF Your Way Through Meetings

  No, I'm not saying to fake it when you don't know something. I'm talking about the acronym BLUF. Bottom Line Up Front It's simple. Lead with what you are trying to accomplish in the meeting so people can stay on track. You are not trying to build sus...

• Brand New Lean Terms for You!

  I was travelling recently, and managed to get quite a few new entries done for my Lean Dictionary. Internal Setup Mura Muri Nagara One-Piece Flow Point-of-Use Inventory Two-Bin System Please feel free to comment on the terms. Obviously, sho...

• Building a Continuous Improvement Culture Webinar Recording

  In January, I posted an article about ways to start building a continuous improvement culture in your organization. Tim McMahon and I revisited the topic in March when we did a live Lean webinar chat on the subject. Tim added some of his perspective, a...

• Building a Lean Infrastructure Webinar Filling Up Fast...

  Tim McMahon of A Lean Journey and I have been doing our live webinar shows for over half a year now, and we’ve gotten a solid reception to them up until now. But our latest one, 8 Ways to Create an Infrastructure that Supports Lean has been filling s...

• Cancelled Travel Plans Means More 5S Info

  We had a last-minute change of plans in my family, so I ended up staying home rather than traveling over the holiday weekend. In this case, my loss was your gain as I spent a lot of time updating the information relating to 5S in The Continuous Improve...

• Categories of Waste: Why They Don't Really Matter

  Taiichi Ohno divided waste up into seven forms. Since then, there have been several other versions of the categories of waste (CLOSED MITT and DOWNTIME, for example). As a refresher.... The Categories of Waste Defects Overprocessing ...

• Change Resistance: Overcoming Resistance to Change in a Lean Company

  The term ‘resistance to change’ is commonly used in Lean circles. It simply means that people are set in their ways, and often don’t want to modify their routine. Surprisingly, this change resistance doesn’t just occur when people who like t...

• Collective Intelligence and Lean. How to Harness All of Your Team’s Brainpower

  There is a theory called collective intelligence that says groups of people are smarter than individuals. Let's look at a simple example of how this works. Imagine I listed the names of several states up on a board, and asked a room full of people t...

• Communicating Goals: Managing Continuous Improvement Teams

  A while back, I was at clinic for a flu shot. As I was waiting in line, I could hear one of the nurses in the other room loudly describe her manager in unpleasant terms. The main gist of the RN's complaint seemed to center around productivity. Accordin...

• Communicating Your Improvement Initiative

  Starting anything new can be a challenge. It can be especially so at the beginning of a process improvement initiative. Whether the new methods come from Lean, Six Sigma, a hybrid of the two, or a homegrown philosophy, people have a natural resistance ...

• Communication. Lean Depends on It.

  I have spent the majority of my waking hours for the last three weeks or so staring at my computer screen. My bloodshot eyes have gotten to really dislike re-doing any work I have already done once. To prevent the waste of this rework, we at Velact...

• Competition at Work. How Lean Principles Can Help.

  When you hear the term ‘competition’, you mind likely immediately pictures two companies competing for market share. Google and Microsoft locked in an epic battle. Oil companies fighting over drilling rights. Car dealers offering ever-s...

• Continuous Improvement Teams: 6 Reasons Why Crab Fishing on Deadliest Catch is a Model for Lean Managers & Employees

    Continuous Improvement Teams   6 Reasons Why Crab Fishing on Deadliest Catch is a Model for Lean Managers and Employees Where can you find some of the best Lean Six Sigma teams around? The people I’...

• Continuous Improvement: It's not just for the law-abiding anymore

  I have to say, I was amused by a recent article. Authorities seize catapult used to hurl pot into Arizona The headline pretty much sums up the story. Drug smugglers, looking for a new way to get their product to market, were thinking outside the ...

• Correlation or Causation? Interceptions and the Playoffs.

  SI.com recently ran an article about the 'interception ladder'. It looked back at playoff games since 1970, and found an interesting statistic. With each interception a team throws (accidentally throwing to the guys in the wrong jersey) the chance that...

• Costs of Business. What Does 'Cost' Really Mean?

  Reducing the costs of doing business is one of the main goals of Lean. But, as I worked on the term 'costs' for The Continuous Improvement Companion, it struck me that there are a significant number of ways to look at costs. I've compiled many of th...

• Could Lean Help Me Go Pro?

  I had dinner last night with a friend I hadn't seen in a number of years. We did a lot of catching up, but because we first met working for a company that was just ramping up its commitment to Lean, we talked a lot about continuous improvement. I...

• Cursive is Dead. Long Live the Keyboard.

  I just read an interesting article that said the State of Indiana will no longer require their schools to teach cursive in class. My first response was more emotional than logical. I couldn’t believe that cursive writing is dying. It would be hard to...

• Customer Service-Lean: First Impressions Last

  There's a little pastry shop up the road from us. It's just far enough off our beaten path that we have to make an effort to go there. My wife stopped in a few years back and got lousy service. I had gone around the same time, but I thought the staff ...

• Customer Service: Retention to an Extreme

  I had an interesting experience with my health club this week. It had to do with what I am presuming is a customer retention policy. I was cancelling one of the services they offer, but keeping the membership. First off, they told me I could not do ...

• Customer Value Added. Helping the customer get more value out of using your product.

  When we think of process improvement, our minds often jump immediately to what the business is doing to fill a customer's needs. We are not as good at looking at the steps the user takes. Is customer value added every time the product is used? A ...

• Customer Value: The 5 Principles of Lean Customer Value

  Lean is successful in large part because of its focus on the customer. It puts a great deal of emphasis on the concept of value. Value Stream Maps and the practice of distinguishing value-added and non-value added activities both immediately come t...

• Deming's Great Lapse in Logic

  I'm going to start out by saying that I fully expect to be blasted for this article. Challenging anything that Deming or Ohno or Shingo or Juran says is walking on thin ice in the Lean community. Despite that, I am going to do it anyway. Lately, I hav...

• Do Goals Limit Team Performance?

  Conventional wisdom contends that goals are essential for improving team performance. I've shared that belief for years, but what if it is wrong? What if goals act to hold back a team's performance? For low performing teams, I'm convinced that goals d...

• Does Lean Need Agile?

  I like to be challenged in my beliefs. For this reason, I am running an article that was submitted to me by Stephen Jannise of SoftwareAdvice.com. Stephen's premise is that Lean is no longer enough to thrive in today's competitive, flexible market. ...

• Does Your Leadership Style Create Management Waste?

  When improving an operation, most people only look at the process. They seldom dive into the manager's role in running that process. Often, the way a leader behaves can have a substantial impact on how smoothly a process can flow. Watch out for… ...

• Domino's Restaurant Kaizen

  I was watching a little TV to wind down this evening, and saw an interesting commercial from Domino's. Apparently, the pizza franchise did a little restaurant kaizen and came up with a new recipe. I am sure restaurants are constantly tweaking their ...

• Don't Be Scared of Being Scared

  Fear can paralyze us. It can keep us from trying new things, and mire us in bad situations when we are too frightened to take a risk to try to change things. Rather than talk in more detail about this, I am going to point you to another blogger who...

• Don't Blindly Follow Directions

  Standardizing processes is an important component of Lean success. But just because instructions are written down does not mean that they are correct, or even safe. I saw an article recently that reinforced this. Apparently, according to a story on ...

• Don't Debate Something That Can Be Measured

  In Lean, there are certainly some things that are open for debate. How aggressively to set goals, for example. When the criteria used to select a course of action are different for both sides, there is likely to be a disagreement. (See my recent video ...

• Don't Go Crazy with Your 5S

  I often see people focusing on technical aspects of 5S, rather than the purpose of what 5S is all about. Remember, 5S is intended to create a more productive, effective workspace. Some common errors include: Defining a location for a fixed object. ...

• Don't Trust New Technology!

  I received a very interesting e-mail this morning from one of my readers regarding yesterday's post on policy deployment. Here it is: Jeff: Have you started using some sort of speech-to-text software?  There are several grammar/syntax errors in tod...

• Don’t Let Cost Reduction Eliminate Customer Value

  I’m a fan of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Recently Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger (the ‘Hero of the Hudson’) was a guest on the show.  Jon Stewart brought up a part of Sully’s book (Highest Duty: My Search for What Really Matters) whe...

• Dumb Jobs: Dirt Can't Hide. Dumb Can.

  Earlier this evening, I was recording some Lean audio training-my "Dirty, Dumb, or Dangerous" entry from The Continuous Improvement Companion. I thought I'd highlight one of the points I made in that article. (Remember-dirty, dumb, or dangerous t...

• Employee-Customer Relationships and Airlines

  I recently went to a restaurant, and received this bill for an item that cost $12.95 on the menu: Item Price Food $12.95 Food Preparation Surcharge $3.95 Property Tax Surcharge $0.95 Site Security Fees $0.37 Waiti...

• Establishing Standards: How Using Incentives Helps

    Establishing Standards   How Using Incentives Helps Many years ago, when I was a lieutenant in the Army, I was responsible for a motor pool—a military word for a glorified lot where the unit parked its fo...

• Every Approval Is a Leadership Failure

  Businesses are full of managerial approval loops. An employee wants to take a break, and he must check in with the supervisor. An employee wants to buy a hand tool, and she must go through channels to put in the request. A back-office employee wan...

• Every Conflict Comes From a Gap in Expectations

  Every conflict can be traced back to a gap in expectations. Every single one. Every time. I normally don't make such definitive statements, but in this case, I am convinced. Every time I have ever had a dispute with someone, whether it was with my w...

• Examples of Lean: Teach Your Teams With Examples They Can Relate To

    Examples of Lean   Teach Your Teams With Examples They Can Relate To I bet you have not thought much about how you choose the examples of Lean you use to illustrate points. Whether you are conducting traini...

• External and Internal Customers in Lean

  Lean focuses on the customer. That's one of its bedrock principles, and is reinforced with every value stream map. Value for an external customer is fairly easy to pinpoint. If a customer is willing to pay for something, they value it. But if they a...

• Failure Isn't Really Failure

  I was recently reading a rather old book on customer satisfaction by Bob Tasca. He had an interesting quote about failure. "Failure isn't failure at all—it's information." Now, I am not saying to go out trying to fail just to gather information...

• Featured Lean Thinker: Chris Paulsen

  The latest member of our Featured Lean Thinker group is Chris Paulsen. Chris and I have commented back and forth several times on various blog posts, and you'll see his ideas frequently on blogs and forums throughout the Lean community. He's got a shar...

• Featured Lean Thinker: Evan Durant

  This week's Featured Lean Thinker is Evan Durant. Though he doesn't mention it in his bio, he blogs about Lean on occasion at his Kaizen Notebook blog. I like reading his articles, as we share some common background. Evan works at a Danaher company. I ...

• Featured Lean Thinker: Jay Watson

  This week's featured Lean thinker has been a guest in a few podcasts now. He is Jay Watson of FreeLeanSite.com. Jay is one of those seasoned veterans of Lean from before it was mainstream. Yet with all those years of experience, he still has passion...

• Featured Lean Thinker: Jeff Hajek

  I am working with a new group in the near future, and they requested that I start out by introducing myself in the ‘Featured Lean Thinker’ format. I realized I hadn’t actually answered the questions myself, so instead of just talking to the group...

• Featured Lean Thinker: Mark Graban

  This week's featured Lean thinker is Shingo prize winner Mark Graban. I suspect that many of you are familiar with his LeanBlog.org and his work in Lean healthcare. If you are not, you should be. So, here's how Mark answered my Lean questions… ...

• Featured Lean Thinker: Mark Rosenthal

  This week's featured Lean thinker is Mark Rosenthal, who, for the last three years, has written his blog, appropriately named for this article, The Lean Thinker. Mark is also a former coworker of mine. So, here's how Mark answered my Lean questions…...

• Featured Lean Thinker: Tim McMahon

  In an effort to build the Lean community, I am introducing a new weekly posting in the Gotta Go Lean Blog. Every Thursday, I will profile a "Featured Lean Thinker". These are the people who have a voice in the Lean community, and are shaping the way pe...

• Find a Factory Whisperer

  Most people look at a factory, and just see a building where people make things. They just see chaos. They see people mixed with inanimate objects, sprinkled with the occasional robot. But there is more to it than that. A factory is a living, breath...

• Fishbone / Ishikawa / Cause and Effect Diagram Video Training

  I'm on a roll this week. Getting a lot of new content out. Today, I posted a Lean video training presentation on the Fishbone/Ishikawa/Cause and Efect Diagram (the link takes you to the term in our Lean Dictionary.) It's a six minute video that show...

• Free (Lean) Tax Advice

  I saw a blurb in Forbes magazine that I just had to check out. It referred to an instruction located on the US tax form 2106-EZ. The instruction says, "An expense does not have to be required to be considered necessary." I have to confess, I don't h...

• Gauge Go/No-Go. Can You Be Lean and Not Even Know It?

  I was just winding down watching some TV on a Sunday night, and it struck me that a lot of people are Lean without even realizing it. To be fair, I have a rather broad definition of Lean. I basically use it interchangeably with "continuous improveme...

• Give Us Your Opinion on Gotta Go Lean Article Types

  Up until now, the Gotta Go Lean blog has been published on a rather flexible schedule depending on the amount of time being spent producing new training materials and serving clients. Well, as our readership has grown, so too has the need to be more s...

• Government Lean. The TSA and Process Improvement.

  Airports and government agencies give such great opportunities for Lean blog articles. Despite the abundance of topics where I could point out problems, I have to say there are lots of positive changes I see in the face of challenging regulations and s...

• Guess What. You’re Not Unique.

  In my travels, I have lost track of how many people have told me that their situation is unique, or that their process is different. The truth of the matter is that they are right. Every process is unique, and every situation is different. But ironical...

• Guest on "The Lean Nation" Friday, August 20, 2010!

  Exciting News! I will be a guest on the world famous The Lean Nation radio show on Friday, August 20, 2010 from 4-5pm Eastern time on 790 AM Talk and Business, hosted by Karl Wadensten.  We're going to discuss an article I wrote as a guest on Mark...

• High Energy + No Direction = Problems!

  I saw this sign at a coffee shop a while ago, and spent the whole day moderately amused. First of all, I am a big coffee fan. I joke that I can't give blood because the caffeine in my veins would wake up patients during surgery. Second, I am not...

• High School Math and Lean

  Let's break out a little high school math and talk about a difference between shop floor cycle times and the time it takes to do work in the office. Cycle time on the shop floor is fairly straightforward. There is a time that a task takes, plus a li...

• How Can Healthcare Be So Good and So Bad?

  Over the last few days, I've got to experience both the good and the bad of the healthcare system in the US. You see, my daughter was a bit over-adventurous with her parkour in the playground and broke her ankle trying to leap from a ladder to a set of...

• How Do YOU Approach An Idea?

  There are two basic types of people. Those who are worried about trying an idea that won’t work, and those that are worried about not trying an idea that might work. The first type can go a whole career with some degree of success. Every time I play...

• How Lean Fights Obsolescence

  I heard an interesting story the other day about baggage fees. Although the decision to charge for extra bags has alienated travelers, it hasn’t seemed to reduce the number of fliers significantly. But the fees did, however, alter passenger behavior....

• How to 5S. Or More Accurately, How NOT to 5S.

  5S is one of the building blocks of Lean, and really, any continuous improvement effort. Learning how to 5S properly can launch a company on the path to greatness. Unfortunately, many companies don't learn how not to 5S. What you don't do can be as imp...

• How to Organize Cables with 5S

  I was sitting here looking at my computer, and my eyes wandered to the various ways my computer cables are organized. I wondered how other people organize cables and cords. First of all, why bother to organize cables? Because an organized and clean wo...

• How to Overcome 24 Common Lean Excuses

  Change is hard for some people. And since Lean requires a significant shift from typical thinking, it can generate some strong resistance. One of the most common forms of pushback when changing to a Lean mindset is the use of excuses. People are extrem...

• Identifying Waste: Stop. Don’t Look. Listen. 15 Sounds That Shout Waste.

  Waste reduction is a cornerstone of Lean.  Waste is anything that does not add value to a process or serve the customer. The first step to eliminating waste is identifying it. Most people do this by observing a process and looking for inefficiency or ...

• Implementing Kaizen: How Late Should Kaizen Teams Work?

    Implementing Kaizen   How Late Should Kaizen Teams Work? Great Lean practitioners and change agents know the same thing about implementing kaizen that a carpenter does about his trade. You have to use the...

• Implementing Lean in 3 (Not So) Easy Steps

  [caption id="attachment_7182" align="alignright" width="191" caption="There's No Magic Wand for Implementing Lean"][/caption] I am often asked about what can make implementing Lean easier, or how to do it quicker. Unfortunately, implemen...

• Improvement Objectives In Lean

  You might be surprised to hear me say this: Does that mean that I am not driven to make big gains in Lean? No. Does that mean that I don't think Lean goals are important? Absolutely not. [important]You shouldn't be hitting all of your Lean improvemen...

• In Lean Jobs, Experience Is Less Important

  In some jobs, experience is critical. I want to be treated by a doctor who has seen every symptom for every disease. I want my pilot to have logged a massive number of flight hours. The few times I’ve needed a lawyer to prepare legal documents for me...

• Inspect Your Inspections

  Any time I hear the word 'inspection', I think failure. An inspection is an admission that you haven't been able to build quality into a production process. That said, I think there is a place for inspections, as long as there is recognition that th...

• Inspection and Quality. How the NFL Can Teach You About Lean.

  So, it is a Sunday morning, and the outlook for today is bleak. You see, it is the bye week for my favorite football team--the Chicago Bears. I can handle the wait from the end of the season until the first game of the next one, but giving me a taste o...

• Internal Suppliers: Measuring the Support You Get

    Internal Suppliers   Measuring the Support You Get Whether you are in Lean manufacturing or in a Lean office, you will be relying on external and internal suppliers to support you - information technology (...

• Interruptions and Lean

  A recent study on interruptions in emergency rooms had a surprising finding. (See the full article on CNN here) I wasn't surprised at how often doctors were interrupted: 11% of all tasks. In fact, that might be low for any given office worker. Shop ...

• Introducing Lean Larry and How He Used Visual Work Instructions

  I love what I do, but there is one part that brings me particular joy. I get to play with Legos™ as part of my job. Who wouldn’t love that? So, taking that a step further, I've created a short video introducing Lean Larry, the production manag...

• Is Success Possible?

  I get a monthly shot to battle my seasonal allergies. As part of the process, the nurse has to confirm my information, prep the injection site, and administer the special concoction. Then there is waiting period where I have to be observed to make sur...

• Is There Value in Lean Certification?

  The Lean community learns a lot from each other. Two forward thinkers that I follow pretty regularly are Mark Graban of Leanblog.org and Ron Pereira of LSSAcademy.com. A little while ago, Mark posted an article on Lean certifications, and mentioned ...

• Is Toyota Still the Champ?

  Toyota has unquestionably been instrumental in promoting Lean principles through its production system. The evolutionary, and sometimes revolutionary, path it has followed has been emulated by many, and is often held out as the beacon of Lean in the co...

• Is Your Leadership Style a Bottleneck to Creativity?

  Leaders have a tough job. They are in charge, so the success and failure of an organization rests on their shoulders. It makes sense that they want to have a lot of say in how things are done. It is also true that most managers got to where they wer...

• It's About Time!

  Actually, this article really is about time. In Lean operations, there are many, many, many references to time. This is a comprehensive list of time terms you may run across in your continuous improvement travels. Please feel free to offer additional t...

• Job Stress and Lean…and Rainbows?

  Last night, I was trying to think of a topic for an article to write for this morning’s post. At first, I felt my blood pressure start to rise in lockstep with the rising job stress. But then, I remembered something. I know Lean principles. I s...

• Kaizen at Home, Holiday Style!

  Well, we are deep in the heart of the holiday season. Like many of you, I visited some family last week. I happened to be in Spokane, and one night we went out looking at Christmas lights. Just outside the city, there is a barn with a pretty amazing di...

• Kaizen Creativity: Breaking Preconceived Notions

  One of the harder things for people to do at work is to really cut their creativity loose. Industry as a whole tends to reward successful creativity, but when ideas, especially ones that have just a sprinkling of 'crazy' on top, don't pan out, the pers...

• Leading Change: What’s Good for the Goose ISN’T Good for the Gander

  I was watching Jon Stewart, where I get all my fake news from, and he had an interesting guest, Atul Gawande, the author of The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right. Now, if you've spent time looking at my site, you'll know that I am a f...

• Lean and the News (and a Contest!)

  The more I read about problems that companies and other organizations encounter, the more I believe that Lean is the answer. As I write this, one of the stories in the current news cycle is about how a man was able to walk into a terminal at Newark ...

• Lean and the Trapeze

  I think I might have mentioned in past articles that I see Lean in everything nowadays. Last Saturday was no different. My wife surprised me with an adventure for our anniversary. She took me to a place that teaches people how to swing on the trapeze. ...

• Lean Articles of Interest: 3/16/2010

  I thought I’d try something new, and post a few links to articles I found interesting over the last week. I’ll try to do this every Tuesday if there seems to be interest in it. If you’d prefer not to have this added as a regular feature, please l...

• Lean Articles of Interest: 3/23/2010

  Here are some of the articles that captured my attention this week. If you happen to see any others that you think should make the next list, please let me know in the comments section below. This week’s Lean articles of interest… Greg Eisenbac...

• Lean Articles of Interest: 3/30/2010

  Here are a few articles I found interesting this week. One of my readers (Thanks, Brian J!) sent me a link to an interview with Kip Tindell of The Container Store. Tindell says that one great person can be as productive as three good team members...

• Lean Articles of Interest: 4/15/2011

  Interesting Articles From Around the Web Career Advice on Resolving Conflict. Bud Bilanch is "The Common Sense Coach, and provides some great career advice that could just as easily be Lean advice. Stand-Up Meeting Humor. Mike Wroblewski shows that...

• Lean Articles of Interest: 4/27/2010

  This week's Lean articles of interest… From Tim McMahon, an article on how to listen. Ron Periera found an interesting andon in a bathroom. Bud Bilanich has been running a series of "Success Tweets." Not specifically Lean, but applicable no...

• Lean Articles of Interest: 5/18/2010

  This week's Lean articles of interest… I like the video and comments Mark Graban posted on his Leanblog.org about no problems being a problem. I especially like the part where the speaker says that if there are no problems, there is no need for...

• Lean Articles of Interest: 6/15/2010

  This week's articles of interest… I like the short and sweet nature of Greg Eisenbach's Grassroots Innovation blog. In this post, he found a sign at a construction site (Obscenity Alert! It is a construction site, after all.) that highlights th...

• Lean Articles of Interest: 6/7/2010

  This week in Lean… Hard not to like Lean articles set against a sports backdrop. Ron Pereira talks about the blown call the stole a perfect game. I've been involved in a long discussion with Mark Graban on his blog about rewarding performance...

• Lean Articles of Interest: 7/13/2010 (Sports Edition)

  This week's articles of interest focus on sports news… The first article highlights the need to think through all of the consequences of an action. Usain Bolt, the current world record holder in the 100 meter dash, has opted out of a race in En...

• Lean Articles of Interest: 9/14/2010

  I've gotten away from my articles of interest lately, but thought I'd get back to it… Mark Graban, coincidentally, posted a video about misguided 5S on the same day as I wrote about it. It's a good, amusing way to spend a few minutes of your time. ...

• Lean Education: Can it Work?

  I saw an article on CNN and thought it would make a good point about Lean. The piece is titled “Why teaching is ‘not like making motorcars’”. The article compares education with producing cars, but misses a key point. [caption id="attachment...

• Lean Escape Velocity

  A gerontologist [slider title="Definition"]One who studies aging and the problems of aging people.[/slider] named Aubrey de Grey has a theory about longevity that basically says in the future, medical and other technological advances will increase aver...

• Lean Leadership Soft Skills

  Learning the technical aspects of Lean takes time and effort. But, what few people recognize is that it is much harder to develop the soft skills of continuous improvement. The following list contains some of the greatest challenges—and opportunities...

• Lean Lessons from Steve Jobs Being Poked with a Stick

  I was working on a project for a consulting client and took a short break to see what was new in the news. I came across an interesting article about a late-night (alcohol-fueled) exchange between a blogger (the one fueled by the alcohol) and Steve Job...

• Lean Measurement: It’s all in how you measure it…

    Lean Measurement   It's all in how you measure it... Forbes magazine recently released its 2009 ‘best colleges’ list. My alma mater, the US Military Academy (West Point) came out on top. I am pleased...

• Lean Nation Appearance Postponed

  Well, a last minute scheduling change has happened, and my appearance today on "The Lean Nation" has been postponed. I'll let you know as soon as I get back on the calendar. I'll also let you know about a few more new terms in The Continuous Improvem...

• Lean Podcast-Managing the Fear of Failure in Lean

  Today’s podcast addresses a topic that many ‘Lean Rookies’ face: the fear of failure. Making mistakes is a part of kaizen–when you are trying a lot of things quickly, not all of them are going to work out. Listen in to a story about how I ...

• Lean Problems: Why Not Dream Big?

  Why Not Dream Big? As I was driving the other day, a license plate frame caught my eye. It said something like “I’m driving my silver dream.” The car was nice – a Japanese import that probably ran about $20K new, but has been out of producti...

• Lean Results: Don’t Believe the Hype (At Least in a Kaizen Report Out)

  I place a lot of value on integrity. I was always pretty honest growing up. I once returned a pair of Susan B. Anthony dollars to a lunch lady when she gave them to me instead of two quarters. And my parents had a knack for finding all sorts of things ...

• Lean Six Sigma Staffing. 8 Traits of People Who Excel at Continuous Improvement & Boost Productivity

    Lean Six Sigma Staffing   8 Traits of People Who Excel at Continuous Improvement Conventional wisdom supports the belief that people with formal Lean and Six Sigma training are the ones that are best at mak...

• Lean Success in Public vs. Private Companies

  There are many reasons that Lean can fail to take hold in an organization. One complaint that I hear commonly is about the short term financial pressure on publicly traded companies. Lean requires a long term investment in people and processes. When a...

• Lean System vs. Lean Tools

    Lean System vs. Lean Tools   A Lean System and Lean Tools Go Hand-in-Hand Would you go to a doctor whose credentials included only the following? Ø Completed a six year program at ‘Scalpel Universit...

• Lean Versus Batch Manufacturing Video

  Lean vs. Batch Manufacturing I’m branching out a little, and have been working on some video content for my site. This one is an animated comparison of how products flow through batch and Lean manufacturers. The side-by-side view of both produc...

• Lean Wins!

  The skills managers value is reflected in the way they recruit new employees. One noticeable shift last year was the widening of the gap between job postings for Lean versus Six Sigma. The data comes from The Avery Point Group. In their first year o...

• Lean Workplace: Group Dynamics, Basketball, and Lean Projects

  I frequently like to unwind by playing some basketball at a local gym.  Actually, to be a little more accurate, I play something that is vaguely recognizable as basketball. You'd think that with my years of experience at process improvement, I'd learn...

• Lean, Poka Yokes, and Taxi Cabs

  Recently, a study in New York City found that nearly three quarters of cabbies had charged an out-of city rate for rides within the city, at about twice the cost to the passenger. Now, the actual numbers come out to 1.8 million out of 360 million tr...

• Lean, Reasons, and Excuses

  What's the difference between a reason and an excuse? The difference is one of intent. When a person has the intention of eliminating the barrier, he has encountered a reason. When a person does not intend to do anything about it, the obstacle is an ex...

• Lean: Standard Work & Lean Success in 8 Easy Steps

  Let's start out by assuming that you understand the definition of Lean standard work and are familiar with the three main documents for standard work. Armed with that basic information, you still have one big decision to make. Where do you start imple...

• Learn About Saying No to Lean

  Just wanted to give a quick heads up about an article I wrote as a guest author for Mark Graban's LeanBlog.org. It is about the need to say no to a variety of things in order to be successful at Lean. Read all about it here.

• Learning Lean Through Making Coffee (Recorded Webinar)

  A few weeks back, Tim McMahon and I hosted an online show in which we talked about how a pair of coffee makers can be a great backdrop for Lean lessons. They provide simple examples and are familiar to most people. They also have the advantage of not ...

• Learning Lean: Always Re-learning Lean Lessons

    Learning Lean   Always Re-Learning Lean Lessons Once again, I found myself re-learning Lean lessons. This time it was a valuable one about inventory. Whenever I go to the big warehouse style megastore, t...

• Let Me Think for Seven Minutes

  So, this afternoon, I was straightening up the house, and I saw a wrapper on the floor in the family room. I asked my young son if he left it there. His response? "Let me think for 7 minutes." I tried hard not to laugh. After all, I am trying to rein...

• Make Quality Better: Eliminate Hammers

  To make quality better, you frequently have to go hunting for problems. One indicator of problems, though, is hard to miss. In heavy manufacturing, you can walk through a facility and hear the sounds of hammers ringing off in the distance. Let's sta...

• Make Sure There’s a Hole in Your Hoop

  I’ll admit, I sometimes have readers and customers coming to me questioning my policies and practices. In some cases I recognize immediately that I'm not providing the best service and I change my process on the spot. But as a small company, I am oft...

• Managing Expectations in 3 Steps

  Over the years, I’ve seen my share of conflict between people. Some has been overt—two people arguing during a project, or a couple waiting in line in front of me that clearly had some unresolved issues. Other times, the conflict was more subtle. ...

• Marketing: Lean and Your Brand

  I was freshening up my draft of the brand entry for The Continuous Improvement Companion (click this link to go to its online Lean Dictionary), and thought it would make a good, quick post for the Gotta Go Lean blog. What came to mind? The fact t...

• Mirror, Mirror on my Workbench, Who’s the Quickest with a Wrench?

  Just a quick tip today. Part of being successful at Lean is in developing a bag of tricks that you can reach into when a given situation presents itself. So, what do you do when you see an operator spin a product around (or lean over it) to check som...

• Mistake Proofing: Temporary Speed Bumps and Schools Zones

  In the last few months, I've seen several speed traps set up in schools zones where multiple police officers line up and systematically pull over a steady stream of drivers. Now, I'm not in the car with those drivers, but I would bet that most of them...

• Morning Walkthrough Tips

  The morning walkthrough sets the stage for a successful day in an effective company. Here are a few tips for leaders to take to heart when they prepare for a new day. [caption id="attachment_7009" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Morning Wal...

• My Braces and Lean

  [caption id="attachment_6859" align="alignright" width="180" caption="Lean and Orthodontia (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons)"][/caption] In less than a week, I get my braces off. I thought it would be done at that point, but my orthodontist told me that ...

• My Daughter Taught Me Again

  I was having one of those 'Father Knows Best' moments with my daughter yesterday. I was trying to explain to her why school is so important. One of my arguments was that the better you do in school, the better job you tend to get. Of course, she saw a...

• Need to Poka Yoke My Process...

  I won’t bore you with the details, but I want to apologize for the last post (Process Evaluations) that went out on my Gotta Go Lean Blog’s RSS feed. In short, it was a mistake—I don’t mind advertising my products in this forum if they are r...

• Neuroscience and Lean

  I was surfing around the Kindle store the other day, and found a free download that looked interesting. It is no longer free, though. Sorry. The title might put some people off: Your Brain and Business: The Neuroscience of Great Leaders. To be honest,...

• New (QCD) and Improved (Kanban) PDF Downloads for You

  Just wanted to send out a quick note to let you know we have revised our QCD term, and added a 5-page PDF for registered users to download. We have also revised our kanban term, and have a new and improved download for that term as well. Print them o...

• New Lean Terms for the Week (May 28, 2010)

  I haven't posted a new article in a little while, but that doesn't mean I haven't been working to get you some great new information. I added another tool to my list of free Lean forms, bringing the total to 21! You can now get a copy of my kaizen chec...

• New Lean Terms Update for September 1, 2010

  Just a quick update for today. I've gotten several new terms posted to The Continuous Improvement Companion. Enjoy. Change Management Current State Map Design for Manufacturing

• Obstacles to Lean

  Lean works. It's been proven time and time again that its methods and strategies are effective, and that companies that crack the code of Lean improve their operations significantly. But Lean also flounders in some companies, making it harder than it...

• Office Process Flow and IF-THEN Statements

  What’s the biggest difference between how shop floor (gemba) work and office processes flow? It’s not what you might think. A task is a task, whether you are grinding out burrs, installing an electric motor, or entering data. Sure, the motions ...

• Office Space Meets the Real World

  An interesting story caught my eye today. Apparently, an employee decided not to come to work…for 12 years. Amazingly, the paychecks never stopped. It reminded me of this exchange from the movie 'Office Space': Peter Gibbons: …. I uh, I don't...

• Office Work, Hajek's Law of

  Today's Gotta Go Lean article comes from a new entry in our Lean dictionary… Many office work areas don't control the flow of work onto people's desks. As a result, individuals may face a small pile of work on one day, and a large pile of work the n...

• One Person's Value Stream is Another Person's Waste

  One of the core tenets of continuous improvement is to work relentlessly to eliminate waste. But waste is a relative concept. Think about the accounting department in your company? Do you consider the credit checks they do to be value added? What abou...

• Out of Box Thinking…from an Insurance Company?

    Out of Box Thinking...from an Insurance Company?   I saw an interesting advertisement that highlights ‘out of box thinking’. Surprisingly, this innovation came from an insurance company. [caption id...

• Outsourcing Homework? It Was Bound to Happen.

  Everybody outsources to an incredibly large degree—car maintenance, yard work, cooking, cleaning, milking cows, mail delivery. The world would not function without outsourcing. But I was surprised to see how far the concept of outsourcing can go. ...

• Overprocessing Waste: A Different Spin on the Waste of Overprocessing.

  Let’s talk a little about the waste of overprocessing. Anyone who has been around Lean for more than a day or so has dived into the seven wastes (eight with unused creativity thrown in). One of the wastes is the waste of overprocessing. The most c...

• Peanut Butter and Jelly. Starsky and Hutch. Inspection and Quality?

  Inspection and quality go together, right? Wrong! Conventional wisdom holds that inspection and quality go together like those other famous partnerships in the title. After all, there are mountains of books on how to create sampling plans to check qual...

• Performance Reviews are a Batch Process

  In Lean companies, we talk frequently about how batching is bad and flow is good. And yet, nearly every company batches its performance reviews into an annual evaluation. The irony is thick. Those very evaluations—the ones containing 365 days of o...

• Personal Kaizen: Getting Lean the Lean Way

    Personal Kaizen   Getting Lean the Lean Way After sitting for countless hours in front of the computer when I was writing my Lean book, I noticed that my washer and dryer started to malfunction. They starte...

• Podcast: Frontline Lean Leadership with Tim McMahon

  I’m pleased to be posting an interview I did last month with Tim McMahon. He’s a Lean Manufacturing Leader at a fiber optics company, the Social Networking Lead for the Northeast region of the Association of Manufacturing Excellence, and has a Lean...

• Podcast: The Lean Management Mindset, Part 1

  This week, we have the first of a two part podcast series on the Six Simple Steps toward a Lean Management Mindset. In these recordings, I interviewed Jay Watson, the managing editor of www.FreeLeanSite.com. He recently completed a six week project, an...

• Poka Yoke Devices and Airlines

  There is a news story circulating around about an airliner that missed its designated stop. The control tower tried unsuccessfully to contact the plane for 78 minutes. The plane ended up flying 150 miles past the airport before the pilots re-establishe...

• Poka Yoke? Or Poka Yuck...

  I just got back from doing some Lean training last week. I frequently return with a few pictures from my travels that are at least a little bit interesting. I apologize for the picture quality. Apparently, when the lens of your camera gets grimy, the p...

• Predictive Problem Solving

  I answered a question on a forum earlier this week, and it has had me thinking. It asked how we thought efforts to improve quality would be different in the future. My answer was that I saw a more predictive approach to quality. That just means that...

• Prevent Layoffs: Use Lean Skills to Protect Your Job

    Prevent Layoffs   Use Lean Skills to Protect Your Job The current economy reminds me of a story about two guys walking in the woods. They come upon a grizzly bear up ahead on the trail. The bear sees ...

• Problem Solving: Creative Ideas Don't Have to Cost a Fortune

  How much do you think it would cost to take pictures at the edge of space? You might guess tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. But you’d be wrong. With some basic problem solving skills and a little dash of creativity, your price tag would com...

• Process Improvement and the Census

  In any process improvement effort, observing a process is an important step. I recently came across an interesting article about how the Office of the Inspector General was observing the door-to door counting process of the Census Bureau. Just a few...

• Process Observation: Watch Before You Ask

  Process observation is a critical task in the battle against waste. One of the mistakes people make when observing a process is to ask questions about it before they go to gemba to watch it. This tends to bias the person doing the process observation. ...

• Production Problems and Documentation and Toyota

  Up until now, I’ve refrained from delving into the problems Toyota has been having. Frankly, I don’t know enough about what happened behind the scenes that led to the current problems the company is having. Anything I said would likely take some as...

• Productive Work: How to Quickly Gauge Worker Productivity

  As a Lean consultant, I do a lot of reading about Lean and keep my ear to the ground to try to find new tips and tricks to deliver more value to my clients and the readers of the content on my website. Because I've been doing this a while, the pace ...

• Productivity Incentives That Work

    Productivity Incentives That Work   One way to start developing a continuous improvement culture is to offer productivity incentives. When people are just getting used to Lean, or any other improvement method, t...

• Randomness and Lean and Perfect Games

  One of the rarest feats in sports is the perfect game. For those non-sports fans among you who don't know what that is, it simply means that no batters were able to reach first base. In short, 27 people in a row failed to do their job properly. In f...

• Reader's choice! Help pick an upcoming post.

  Greetings. It dawned on me recently that I’ve been getting some great new content flowing, but it isn’t attached to the feed for my blog. Just thought I’d give you an update on the new stuff available at my site (www.Velaction.com) and ask y...

• Recording of Our "8 Ways to Create an Infrastructure that Supports Lean" Webinar

  Just a quick follow up about our webinar yesterday entitled "8 Ways to Create an Infrastructure that Supports Lean". The webinar seemed to strike a chord with a lot of people, and we have gotten a lot of positive feedback about it. For your convenience...

• Reminder About Friday's Webinar on Things to Avoid in Kaizen

  Just a quick reminder about our upcoming webinar, 8 Things to Avoid to Make Your Kaizen More Successful. It is scheduled for 9:0f PDT on Friday, June 3, 2011. Tim McMahon of A Lean Journey and myself will cover 8 things not to do when planning and runn...

• Reminder About Our Winning Teams Webcast

  Just wanted to remind you (or let you know if you haven't already heard) that Tim McMahon of A Lean Journey and I will be doing our monthly webcast tomorrow, April 15, 2011, at 9:05 AM PDT. This session builds upon last month's topic when we talked abo...

• Selling More to Make Less Is a Bad Combination

  I get occasional emails from my credit card processor for my online sales. The latest one had an interesting headline: Cyber Monday Drives Single-Day Transaction Record This headline refers to the 'Pulse Index', as Chase calls it. It is a measure...

• Seven Wastes: Lean Leadership and Taiichi Ohno's Seven Wastes

  Discussions about continuous improvement frequently mention the term ‘waste’ which is anything that doesn’t add value. But how often are the seven wastes in Lean discussed with respect to managing teams? Leadership, like operations or any othe...

• Some Meandering Thoughts...

  I’ve got somewhat of a meandering article today… First of all, I recently spoke to a group, and one of the things I talked about is how people can have conflicting needs and values, and as a result, end up taking seemingly contradictory actions. ...

• Standard Work Procedures: Hand-Written or Computer Generated?

  There are two conflicting schools of thought on establishing your standard work procedures. Those in favor of computer-generated standard work documents (Standard Work Sheets and Standard Work Combination Sheets [slider title="Learn more"]Click on t...

• Standardization: Process Enhancer or Creativity Killer?

    Standardization: Process Enhancer or Creativity Killer?   Back in May, I was a guest author on Ron Pereira’s LSSAcademy blog. (Click this link for the article on Leadership and Standard Work) ...

• Standardizing Personal Processes

  Look at any continuous improvement philosophy, and at its heart you will find standardization. When people don’t perform a process the same way each and every time, quality suffers, lead times are erratic (and long), and productivity is hamstrung. No...

• Stray Jet Follow-Up

  So, the story about stray jet-the plane that missed its stop and was out of contact for 78 minutes-continues to unfold. The latest CNN article now reports that the pilots have said that they were both distracted because they were using their laptops...

• Stumbling Into Success

  Success can seem lucky on the surface, but it seldom is when you dive deeper into it. Case in point. A few years ago I facilitated a kaizen event in a service center. The main goal was to improve lead time. In the course of the event, it became c...

• Supplier Criteria: Do They Apply to Internal Suppliers, too?

  Most well-managed companies track the performance of its suppliers. Or more specifically, they track the performance of their external suppliers. Common Supplier Criteria Lead time Quality On-time delivery Responsiveness to questions...

• Take "Can't" Out of Your Vocabulary

  As you may recall from previous articles, I am a rather big football fan. So I happened upon this video, and found myself repeatedly rewinding saying, "Did he really just do that?" The short of it is that we often limit ourselves by our expectations...

• Team Members Late to Meetings During a Kaizen Blitz? Not Anymore!

    Team Members Late to Meetings During a Kaizen Blitz? Not Anymore!   I’m going to try out a new style of article to see how well-received they are. Please let me know if you like this ‘quick tip’ format. I ...

• The 18 Principles of Lean Leadership

  Leadership is a critical component of Lean. Whether you are at the top of a company leading the Lean charge, or an engineer working to guide a group of operators on their Lean journey, you need a variety of leadership skills. But while the specific too...

• The 4 "C's" of Lean Leadership

  Acronyms and other mnemonic devices help embed concepts into people's brains. One of the tools I use to remind me of what to look for in Lean leadership is the 4 "C's". Communication: A leader must be able to clearly convey his or her thoughts and i...

• The Case for Continuous Improvement

  Over the years while I was working for other companies, I would sit down in the evening and take notes about what I learned during the day. Eventually, I compiled it into something of a personal guide I could reference. That guide subsequently formed t...

• The Employee Reprimand: Is It Effective?

  Generally, on the spot reprimands and ‘attaboys’ reinforce the wrong behavior…by leaders. [caption id="attachment_3798" align="aligncenter" width="453" caption="Is a general employee reprimand effective?"][/caption]Consider this. A leader is in ...

• The Hardest Step of Problem Solving

  Contrary to what many people think, the hardest step in problem solving is not coming up with a solution, or even sustaining the gains that are made. It is identifying the problem in the first place. Now, there are several different types of prob...

• The Madden Curse and Lean

  In order to keep the football season alive just a touch longer, I wanted to talk about the "Madden Curse". This is the theory that any player that graces the cover of the video game's box will have a sub-par season the following year. As far as the ...

• The Meaning of Lean (+Video)

  I'm sure you've heard many different definitions about what the meaning of Lean is. The strictest meaning will likely center around creating flow, or will possibly mention inventory reduction. I, however, subscribe to a far broader meaning of Lean. I ...

• The One-Week Move-to-Gemba Managers' Challenge

  Very few managers have their desks right out in gemba—the workplace they manage. It is unfortunate, as being right where the action is provides a tremendous value. Managers absorb a better understanding of the process. Managers become more ac...

• The Principles of a Lean Office

  It is easy to get wrapped up in the small stuff and lose sight of the big picture. While this can happen on the shop floor, it is much more prevalent in office settings. For example, teams may become focused on applying a Lean tool like takt time or...

• The Problem With PDCA

  As a small business owner, I have one luxury that most managers and employees in companies don’t have. When I go through the PDCA cycle, there are no competing agendas. Everything that is good for the owner (me) is also good for the manager (also me)...

• The Psychology of Lean

  Workplace Behaviors & Psychology in a Lean Environment What are the first thoughts that pop into your head when I say the word 'Lean'? My bet is that it depends on who you are. If you are a manager, a continuous improvement advocate, or if yo...

• The Real Problem with Air Traffic Controllers Sleeping

  I've been reading a lot about the problem of air traffic controllers falling asleep on the job lately, and I haven’t seen anyone address the real root cause of the problem. What has been mentioned at length is the fact that there are periods of radi...

• The Secret to Successfully Running a Lean Office: Daily Management

  The unfortunate truth is that most leaders, especially in an office environment, don't have as good of an idea of what is going on as they think they do. If you are the manager of an administrative team, there's a good chance that the last comment off...

• The Secret Trick for Office Kaizen Success

  Making improvements requires a complete understanding of a process. A surface knowledge leads to superficial solutions. Getting a permanent, robust, mistake-proofed process requires a level of scrutiny that takes a lot of time and effort. One way to...

• The Standard Work Process: Overcoming Obstacles to Making Effective Standard Work

  The standard work process is a critical piece in the implementation of Lean manufacturing programs. It helps to stabilize a process and it provides a basis for continuous improvement. No matter how good something is, though, there is always a cost to i...

• The Surprising Truth about Automotive Quality

  A few months back I posted an article questioning Toyota's supremacy in quality and in Lean in general. Don’t misunderstand me—I still think Toyota is great at what they do. They have a lot to teach, but I think other companies have taken what Toyo...

• The Symphony of Standard Work

  I heard an interesting comment about Standard Work the other day. A reader asked why someone just didn’t create a Standard Work document on writing a symphony so anyone could be a composer. It's always hard to tell someone's meaning on a short comme...

• The Three Lean Books a New Shop Floor Manager MUST Own

  I thought I’d try a little exercise. I wanted to see how easy it would be for me to make a short Lean library starter list for new shop floor managers in a Lean company. There’s a lot of great Lean books out there, so the task proved harder than I ...

• The Toyota Way and the NFL

  I've been following the NFL labor dispute rather closely, and I am also in the process of reading Jeffrey Liker and Timothy Ogden's new book Toyota Under Fire for an upcoming book review. Having the two things in the forefront of my mind gave me a pas...

• The Truth about Financial Incentives

  Over the last year or so, I've seen a rising belief that says financial incentives don’t work. There are even studies that reinforce this belief. One shows that when financial incentives are given for simple tasks, productivity can rise. But when the...

• The TSA and the Kobayashi Maru

  I saw an interesting report yesterday about a passenger in San Diego who videotaped an interaction with some TSA employees. Reportedly, the passenger opted out of the backscatter screening, but then threatened to have the screener arrested if he "touch...

• The Unforgiving Minute

  Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem titled "If" in 1895. Among many pearls of wisdom in the poem, he makes a reference to the 'unforgiving minute.' It struck a chord with me because of how competitive the business world has become. There is no free time, a...

• The Visual Workplace: Shorten Those Shelves!

  Most people around Lean have heard the term 'visual workplace'. They know that it is the art of making problems leap out at you, and being able to have a process immediately communicate its status to an observer. One barrier to creating an effective...

• There's More to "Lights, Camera, Action"

  Yesterday I read something I hadn’t heard before about a very well-known phrase. I heard that there are standard responses "Lights, Camera, Action." That's right. Each one of the words is actually an instruction that requires a specific response. I...

• Toyota Under Fire Book Review

  I recently received a review copy of Toyota Under Fire: Lessons For Turning Crisis Into Opportunity, (Jeffrey Liker and Timothy Ogden) which I am finally getting around to reviewing. Starting with the bottom line up front, I give the book 4.5 stars and...

• TPM: How to Protect Million-Dollar Athletes and Production Machines

  What does Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) have to do with the sports industry?  Well, I was reading Men's Health and saw an article that turned out to be a pro athlete TPM "how to" guide. (May, 2009. Major League Muscle.) The piece was about ...

• TV Shows that Teach Lean

  I do a lot of channel surfing, and frequently come across shows that teach Lean lessons, albeit without really knowing they are doing it. So here's my list of the TV shows that preach Lean... Kitchen Nightmares. Chef Gordon Ramsay comes in and...

• Ums and Ahs: Improving Your Public Speaking

  Most people are nervous about public speaking. One of the ways this nervousness comes out is in the form of ‘ums’ and ‘ahs’. A few aren’t a problem, but when every second word is ‘um’ and you pepper in the ‘ahs’ for good measure, the ...

• Upcoming Webinars: Lean and Driving, and Daily Management

  Those of you who receive my newsletter might already know this, but we have started offering webinars to help you learn about Lean and to showcase parts of our Lean Training System. The ones we have scheduled for January are all free. Just a few ...

• Using Lean in My Own Business

  My perception from personal observation, feedback from you, and copious amount of reading is that Lean is perceived as a tool to be used in larger companies. Sure, it is put in place for small processes within those businesses, but there is little info...

• Using Video to Support the Process Walk

  I was talking to a consulting client the other day, and mentioned that it would be helpful to use a video camera to record a secondary process that would affect a kaizen team's decisions. This other location is quite a long ways away, so it would chew ...

• Value the Customer: That Didn't Seem Faster...

    Value the Customer   That Didn't Seem Faster... So today I went to the bank to put something in my safe deposit box. While I was there, I was given a refresher course on how to value the customer. Unf...

• Value, Shmalue

  As I troll the Internet looking for juicy new Lean topics to sink my teeth into, I frequently come across questions from people asking about how to classify tasks as value-added or non value-added. Now, the concept of value-added and non value-added...

• Web Surfing Best Practices

  Sharing best practices turbo-charges your Lean efforts. It dramatically speeds up your progress when you don't have to reinvent the wheel for every problem. So, since you are on a continuous improvement site reading this, I am assuming that you'd ap...

• Webinar Recording: 8 Things to Avoid to Make Your Kaizen Successful

  Well, with the right tools, and a better process, things get much easier. I am actually got a webinar recording posted on the same day that Tim McMahon and I presented it. And I am even including a link for registered users to download the PowerPoint p...

• What 5S (Lean) disease strikes millions?

  I am a devotee of 5S. I love what 5S does for my effectiveness at work. I keep things organized, make my workspace support what I do, and prioritize all my ‘tools’ (books, computer peripherals, etc.) so the most important things are at arm’s reac...

• What I Learned from Almost Winning the Shingo Prize

  At beginning of this year I decided to apply for the Shingo prize for my book Whaddaya Mean I Gotta Be Lean? Technically, the award is called “The Shingo Research and Professional Publication Award”, but most people just refer to the award as The ...

• What If Meetings Were Lean?

  When planning a kaizen event, I use a trick to judge how well a leader knows his or her processes. I simply ask for a list of the cycle times. If the times all end in nice, neat numbers (:00, :15, :30, :45), I know they are just estimates, and there is...

• What If You Had to Sign the Other Side of the Check?

  Most people are accustomed to signing the back side of their paycheck. The question I'd ask you to consider, though, is whether you'd behave differently if you were signing the other side of the check. Consider if you had to put your John Hancock...

• What Lean Is Really All About

  To the person who is recently introduced to it, Lean often appears to merely be a set of tools that helps improve quality and  lower costs while making deliveries faster and more consistent. But in truth, the tools behind Lean are just solutions to a...

• What Motivates Employees? The Four Most Important Letters in Continuous Improvement

  Remember Mark Twain’s book, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer? On one hot summer day, young Tom Sawyer got stuck doing a hard day’s labor—whitewashing his aunt’s long picket fence. Mr. Twain tells the tale much better than I can, but the basic plot ...

• What My 8 Year-Old Daughter Taught Me About Lean

  I was a bit humbled over the weekend. As a small business, Velaction outsources some of what we do, but for the things that change rapidly, we have developed internal capabilities. It lets us be more flexible, nimble, and cost-effective when we need to...

• What's at the Core of Lean?

  I pulled a muscle in my back playing basketball a few days ago, and it is surprising how much movement the core of your body is a part of. Things you don't realize—reaching for a computer mouse, pulling open a window, and even picking things up off ...

• What's Your Approach to 5S?

  I recently responded to a question about 5S on a forum. The gist was that the person wanted to know how long to expect 5S to take. Both myself and another responder quickly mentioned that 5S takes a long, long time. He said months; I said it is never ...

• When Bacon and Kaizen Collide...

  Let me list three of my favorite things: Bacon (and other assorted breakfast meats) Kaizen Rockets So imagine my delight when a friend on Facebook posted one of the most brilliant minds of our time combining all three. Now I will warn...

• When Good Processes Go Bad...

  I try to live by the words I preach. I keep my office reasonably well 5S'ed, so I seldom have to look more than a few seconds to find something. I rarely miss deadlines, and hardly ever make promises that I can't keep (with the exception of two podc...

• Why Daily Management is Like a Petri Dish for Lean

  I was watching an episode of Mythbusters last night. They were testing out where the highest concentrations of bacteria reside in your everyday life. (Hint: If you are using your keyboard right now, keep your hands away from your face!) The whol...

• Why I Hate Shadowboards

  Somehow shadowboards have become the badge of Lean. A shadowboard symbolizes 5S to many. It is hard to find a class on Lean that does not show a shadowboard on a slide describing workplace organization. But I hate them. OK, hate is a little strong, ...

• Why is a Lean Call Center like the Tour de France?

  Imagine two call centers. One is 'traditional'. That means that the call sequencing goes to the least busy operator or the first available operator. (Those options area actually listed on a website for a major call center system manufacturer). Th...

• Why Managers Are Bottlenecks

  Quite often, whether on the shop floor or in the office, a process grinds to a halt when frontline employees have to go seek manager approval for something. Whether it is for spending that exceeds a prescribed threshold, when two employees want to swap...

• Work Lean: Ride the Continuous Improvement Wave

  How do you work Lean? It means dedicating a part of your time to continuous improvement. Many people say continuous improvement is important, but then don’t treat it like an actual part of one’s job. But when you work Lean efforts into a schedul...

• You Want Me To Do What????

  This week, we have only one link to share. It's a video of a pretty amazing example of outside the box thinking. Pay attention to the process that the operator uses, and the fixtures that he uses during the transitions. If he can do this, think of w...

• You're in! Nope. Just kidding. Quality control in administrative proccesses.

  Quality Control in the Office The Need for Poka Yokes in Office Environments I saw a story today about an accidental email that informed nearly 29,000 applicants to a California university that they had bee...

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