Confidence is a key principle for world-class companies. They don’t concede victory to other dominant players in the market. Granted, there is a fine line between confidence and overconfidence, but in world-class companies, the line between the two is often…
If you don’t track how things are going, getting better is harder than it should be. Can you improve if you don’t track things? Sometimes. The problem, though, is that problems are often subtle and sap resources without you even knowing it. Others are noticeable, but are…
You may have gotten to Phase 6 on the backs of strong leaders and a handful of motivated individuals. But your company will not thrive once you arrive here unless you get everyone bought in. The ‘full’ in this principle actually has two meanings.
The first is that…
The more you think in terms of systems, the more effective your company will be. Don’t just focus on drawing up Standard Work. Look at the entire work management system. Knowing how you will train people, and even hire people, can drive the way you…
There is an old story about a company that sourced a component from a Lean oriented supplier in Japan, and insisted that the vendor met a 2% failure rate target. The Japanese company balked and resisted that rate, but the purchaser insisted. Finally the Lean company relented and agreed…
There is a common misconception that inspections are an indicator of a good quality program. The truth is that inspections mean complacency. They require that you understand…
Most people go to work to do their job. When a company becomes focused on continuous improvement, that is no longer enough.
The true turning point of a company on its Lean journey is when…
One of the barriers to both creating flow and providing value is that companies are not organized to do either effectively. They tend to have their management system set up in functional silos. To deliver something to the customer it must cross several managerial boundaries. Each manager has his or her own budget and agenda.
Instead, companies should…
p>Taiichi Ohno, the father of modern Lean is credited with saying something to the effect of “without standards there can be no improvement.” While the translation may not be exact, the gist of it is what is important.
The first problem is that…
Flow is a central concept in Lean operations. It is basically the premise that work should never sit. With this as a target, several things happen. The first is that lot sizes are reduced. Work doesn’t flow if it has to wait for a production run to be completed.
Flow also drives…
Most people base the way they think on fight or flight. In the early days of cavemen, people had only those two basic reactions to a problem. How they chose to respond to an event was based primarily on its similarity to something they had seen before. In their situation, it made sense to do this because many situations were a matter of life and death.
In the modern world, though…
p>Mark Twain famously said something to the effect of, “If I had more time I would’ve written a shorter story.” There’s a paradox that it can be harder to build a simple solution than a complicated one. That’s because we have been conditioned to…