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Gotta Go Lean Blog

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 you. This man’s intellect is so advanced that he doesn’t waste his precious brainpower filtering his words. The language (and the occasional action) are a little course. No f-bombs that I recall, but Read more…

By Jeff Hajek, ago

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 anticipated. Initially, I thought Lean Thinking would make the list. It is one of the most widely known and read Lean books. While it Read more…

By Jeff Hajek, ago

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 information specifically geared to using Lean in small business, down to sole proprietorships. People in these types of organizations hear about documenting processes, and think, “Who am I documenting this for? I Read more…

By Jeff Hajek, ago

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 arterials, there are no houses that face the road, so the sidewalks hadn’t been shoveled. As a result, the kids were all walking in the street to get to Read more…

By Jeff Hajek, ago

Podcast: The Differences Between Lean on the Shop Floor and In the Office

We’ve got a special treat for today’s podcast. A few weeks back, I had a chance to interview Mike Osterling. He’s one of the co-authors of The Kaizen Event Planner: Achieving Rapid Improvement in Office, Service and Technical Environments, owns his own consulting business, is a frequent speaker at organizations such as AME, ASQ, and APICS. He also helped co-develop the Lean Enterprise Certificate Program at San Diego State University in 1999. In this 23 Read more…

By Jeff Hajek, ago

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 podcasts I will soon be posting. I am a little behind on editing the audio of a pair of interviews with Mike Osterling, a veteran Lean consultant, Read more…

By Jeff Hajek, ago

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 overhauls a restaurant in a very short time (kaizen). He focuses on respect for people in the work, despite his in-your-face style with relationships. He preaches cleanliness and order (5S). He simplifies Read more…

By Jeff Hajek, ago

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). The other is a Lean call center. They always have the first operator answer the call. If he is on the phone, the second one answers. But if the first operator gets off the phone, he Read more…

By Jeff Hajek, ago

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 little more time for every option that is installed. In the office, though, cycle time often follows the formula Y=mX + b. For those of you with Read more…

By Jeff Hajek, ago

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 and returning them to their rightful owners. Wallets, a bank deposit bag from a small business, and even a motorcycle helmet once. It rubbed Read more…

By Jeff Hajek, ago

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 up a lot of time in the car that could be better spent making improvements. The conversation gave me an idea for a blog article on the use Read more…

By Jeff Hajek, ago