So, it is a Sunday morning, and the outlook for today is bleak. You see, it is the bye week for my favorite football team–the Chicago Bears. I can handle the wait from the end of the season until the first game of the next one, but giving me a Read more…
There is a theory called collective intelligence that says groups of people are smarter than individuals. Let’s look at a simple example of how this works. Imagine I listed the names of several states up on a board, and asked a room full of people to rank order the states Read more…
Just a quick tip today. Part of being successful at Lean is in developing a bag of tricks that you can reach into when a given situation presents itself. So, what do you do when you see an operator spin a product around (or lean over it) to check something Read more…
Lean is successful in large part because of its focus on the customer. It puts a great deal of emphasis on the concept of value. Value Stream Maps and the practice of distinguishing value-added and non-value added activities both immediately come to mind. ‘Voice of the customer’ (VOC) also helps Read more…
The Lean community learns a lot from each other. Two forward thinkers that I follow pretty regularly are Mark Graban of LeanBlog.org and Ron Pereira of LSSAcademy.com. A little while ago, Mark posted an article on Lean certifications, and mentioned that he was biased against them. Ron has the opposite Read more…
How much do you think it would cost to take pictures at the edge of space? You might guess tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. But you’d be wrong. With some basic problem solving skills and a little dash of creativity, your price tag would come out to $148. Read more…
I have to admit I am a fan of seeing what Google puts up on its site. I like seeing the creativity. So, I have to ask the question, is this a joke, or is this a quality problem? (I grabbed this image at about 11:20ish PST, 9/26/09) I’m leaning Read more…
Leaders have a tough job. They are in charge, so the success and failure of an organization rests on their shoulders. It makes sense that they want to have a lot of say in how things are done. It is also true that most managers got to where they were Read more…
Most people are nervous about public speaking. One of the ways this nervousness comes out is in the form of ‘ums’ and ‘ahs’. A few aren’t a problem, but when every second word is ‘um’ and you pepper in the ‘ahs’ for good measure, the message gets lost in the Read more…
Look at any continuous improvement philosophy, and at its heart you will find standardization. When people don’t perform a process the same way each and every time, quality suffers, lead times are erratic (and long), and productivity is hamstrung. No operation can prosper without stable processes that can deliver consistent Read more…
Everybody outsources to an incredibly large degree—car maintenance, yard work, cooking, cleaning, milking cows, mail delivery. The world would not function without outsourcing. But I was surprised to see how far the concept of outsourcing can go. I was checking the news a few days ago, and saw an interesting Read more…
One way to start developing a continuous improvement culture is to offer productivity incentives. When people are just getting used to Lean, or any other improvement method, they probably won’t be regularly offering up ideas. They just aren’t used to that being an expectation of their job. So provide your Read more…