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 Read more…
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 Read more…
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 Read more…
The Noise to Constant Sheet is a tool for organizing and prioritizing effort in an improvement project. The first step to creating a consistent, correct output of a process is to reduce variation. This form lists the noise in a process (the randomness or uncontrolled aspects) and asks teams to Read more…
The KPI bowler gets its name from its resemblance to a bowling score sheet. Learn About the KPI Bowler in our Managing With Metrics Video The form is used to track progress towards meeting key performance indicators. When the results are below the target, the block should be highlighted in Read more…
The 5 Whys form is a simple tool that helps improvement teams find the root cause of a problem. This simple form documents the problem solver’s progress. Velaction’s version of the 5 Whys template adds a unique feature: the confirmation step. One of the drawbacks of the 5 Whys is Read more…
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 the team won dropped. Now, this is a classic case Read more…
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 US right now Read more…
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 Read more…
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 visual workplace is the practice of Read more…
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 appreciate a few time-saving tips on surfing the web. Finding Read more…
Resource allocation is simply the art and science of parceling out the various resources available to an organization. We use resource allocation in our everyday lives. We have to choose how to divide our time, money, and energy. How do we decide? At home, we do it very informally. We Read more…