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 made Read more…
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 of reporting, 2005, they showed job Read more…
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 MSNBC, a woman downloaded walking directions on her phone. The Read more…
Well, I have finally gotten around to editing the second part of my interview with Jay Watson about The Lean Management Mindset. If you are a regular reader/listener of the Gotta Go Lean Blog, you will recall that several weeks back, I posted part one, and mentioned that I’d post Read more…
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 simplify that deep dive and identify the underlying waste that impedes the Read more…
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 trips. The article I Read more…
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 floor workers tend to be more Read more…
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 sure I don’t have any sort Read more…
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 fact, Read more…
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 offended you. If it Read more…
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 do inspire improvement. For those groups, inertia tends to Read more…
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. He recently completed a six week project, and his work highlighted some lessons that he learned over the course of his Read more…