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…
Lean tools are relatively simple to implement. Setting up a management system is significantly more complicated, but it is still not the most challenging part of creating a robust continuous improvement culture. That title goes to understanding how improvement and change affects people. Lean psychology is hands-down the hardest aspect 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…
I recently had the pleasure of spending some time chatting with Jay Watson about engaging employees in Lean efforts. Jay has worked at Motorola, GE, AlliedSignal, and Honeywell over his 35-year career, so the ideas he has about engaging employees are not just theory. He’s been doing this for a Read more…
Process observation is a critical task in the battle against waste. One of the mistakes people make when observing a process is to ask questions about it before they go to gemba to watch it. This tends to bias the person doing the process observation.
Over the years, I have worked with some premiere Japanese Lean consultants. Here are some of the many lessons I learned from them… Watch before asking. Observe a process before asking any questions about it. You’ll prevent biasing what you see. Listen. Listen to the noise around you-you’ll be surprised Read more…
5S is one of the building blocks of Lean, and really, any continuous improvement effort. Learning how to 5S properly can launch a company on the path to greatness. Unfortunately, many companies don’t learn how not to 5S. What you don’t do can be as important as what you do. Read more…
So, the story about stray jet-the plane that missed its stop and was out of contact for 78 minutes-continues to unfold. The latest CNN article now reports that the pilots have said that they were both distracted because they were using their laptops in the cockpit during that time. One Read more…
There is a news story circulating around about an airliner that missed its designated stop. The control tower tried unsuccessfully to contact the plane for 78 minutes. The plane ended up flying 150 miles past the airport before the pilots re-established contact and turned the plane around. It seems strange Read more…
Taiichi Ohno divided waste up into seven forms. Since then, there have been several other versions of the categories of waste (CLOSED MITT, for example). As a refresher…. The Categories of Waste Defects Overprocessing Transportation Motion Waiting Inventory Overproduction Why the Categories of Waste Don’t Matter Breaking waste into categories Read more…
In the last few months, I’ve seen several speed traps set up in schools zones where multiple police officers line up and systematically pull over a steady stream of drivers. Now, I’m not in the car with those drivers, but I would bet that most of them aren’t intentionally trying Read more…
I’m a fan of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Recently Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger (the ‘Hero of the Hudson’) was a guest on the show. Jon Stewart brought up a part of Sully’s book (Highest Duty: My Search for What Really Matters) where Sully had mentioned that his copilot had Read more…