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 Improvement Companion. I Read more…
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 structured in how we publish. Read more…
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 stations to stay fresh, or Read more…
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 company is first trying to weave a Read more…
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 update something on our site, or Read more…
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 they do not feel prepared for the challenge. In our April, 2011 Read more…
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, and we talked for nearly an Read more…
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 discuss how an item Read more…
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 radio silence. In those cases, Read more…
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 roles have limited chances to demonstrate their skills. Read more…
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, I have only skimmed over it Read more…
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 task is complicated, results can actually get worse. Read more…