Working smarter, not harder, is the key to achieving long-term success in today’s fast-paced world. While hard work has its place, it’s essential to adopt strategies that maximize productivity and results without exhausting yourself. Here, we explore four powerful strategies to help you work smart and achieve more quickly. 1. Leverage Your Resources Leverage is […]

Improving your facility’s operational efficiency can have a significant impact on your bottom line. However, it can take a long time to see and feel real results. Why? Because many lean manufacturing providers spend too much time in the sales process. You may experience a delay in turning around your proposal, design, and products or […]

  In this episode of the People Solve Problems podcast, Jamie Flinchbaugh sits down with Crystal Y. Davis, CEO of The Lean Coach, Inc., a boutique consulting and coaching firm that partners with mid-to-large cap companies to enhance operational excellence and drive cultural transformation. Crystal, also known as “Your Corporate Confidante,” brings her vast experience […]

In a recent blog post, CEOs, Lean, and Preference Falsification, I answered the question, “Why do CEOs support Lean when they have little interest in Lean?” In this blog post, I answer the question, “Why don’t CEOs publicly proclaim their dislike of Lean?” There is ample evidence to support the claim that they “dislike Lean.” […]

My four earlier blog posts about the Japanese language books Album of Management Revolution, Taiichi Ohno’s Records: Founder of the Toyota Production System, The Origin of Toyota’s Strength: Taiichi Ohno’s Kaizen Spirit, and Taiichi Ohno and the Toyota Production System, offer much to reflect on about Taiichi Ohno’s thinking and his work as a genba […]

I’ve blogged about this before, but I’m going back to the problems at Starbucks again with today’s post. Starbucks has a new CEO who is talking about how the coffee shop experience is broken. Many aspects of the Starbucks mobile ordering process are broken. Most of the time, after I order from a location a […]

In August and September of 2024, I spent a great deal of time translating and reading four Japanese language books about Taiichi Ohno and writing blog posts that highlighted key passages from the books and provided critical commentary on each passage. The four blog posts, combined, are a lengthy 32,000 words comprising 58 pages. The […]

Production team members discovering opportunities and trying solutions during a Kaizen. Image Source: Tim McMahon An essential element in Lean thinking is Kaizen.  Kaizen is the Japanese word for a “good change” (Kai = change, Zen = good) or change for the better.  It’s a continuous improvement tool to make work easier, safer, and more productive by […]

The Volkswagen plant in Osnabrück is actually the plant of the former cabriolet specialist Karmann, which went bankrupt in 2009 and was bought by Volkswagen. It is the specialist plant for the Volkswagen brand for cabriolets… but the Volkswagen brand will stop making cabriolets in 2025. It is also the overflow plant if other VW […]

Achieving operational excellence means skillfully managing organizational processes and resources to deliver top-notch results. It’s about continually refining internal operations to elevate customer satisfaction, cut down on waste, and boost productivity, fostering sustainable growth and competitiveness. Tools and techniques such as Lean and Six Sigma play a key role in identifying inefficiencies, minimizing waste, and […]

I had a great experience last week at the Lean Institute Brasil‘s annual Lean Healthcare Summit. They had a live human interpreter translate my talk into Portuguese. Somebody estimated that about 70% of the audience would be listening in English. One new experience for me was their use of AI to create a real-time Portuguese […]

I recently purchased an interesting book titled The Savior of Japan’s Revival: Taiichi Ohno and the Toyota Production System by Setsuo Mito. The book was published in 2003 by Yoichi Katoya and Seiryu Publishing Co., Ltd. For more than 40 years, Mito-san was an economic journalist writing for various publications and is also the author of […]

In May 2024 A Lean Journey Blog turned 15 and as I look back on how I got started and who influenced my journey I wanted to revisit a previous series I started in 2012 called the Meet-up. One of the things I am so fond of in the Lean community is the general wiliness […]

For my Facebook fans you already know about this great feature. But for those of you that are not connected to A Lean Journey on Facebook or Twitter I post daily a feature I call Lean Tips.  It is meant to be advice, things I learned from experience, and some knowledge tidbits about Lean to […]

A selection of highlighted blog posts from Lean bloggers from the month of August 2024.  You can also view the previous monthly Lean Roundups here.     Toyota’s Self-Criticism – Bob Emiliani explains that companies have difficulty replicating TPS because most leaders at all levels have the preconception “whatever is, is right,” which makes them resistant to […]

On Fridays I will post a Lean related Quote. Throughout our lifetimes many people touch our lives and leave us with words of wisdom. These can both be a source of new learning and also a point to pause and reflect upon lessons we have learned. Within Lean active learning is an important aspect on […]

Equipment reliability is at the heart of operational success in any maintenance department. Frequent breakdowns, understaffing, and the blame game between production and maintenance teams are all too familiar. However, by focusing on a few core ideas, you can significantly improve the uptime and reliability of your assets. Let’s dive into these actionable strategies that […]

Happy Labor Day to all my American readers! For a lot of people, Labor Day means two things: a day off and the end of summer. However, Labor Day is a day set aside to pay tribute to working men and women and acknowledges the value and dignity of work and its role in American […]

In today’s fast-paced digital world, the right tools can make a significant difference in how efficiently we work. Luckily, there are a variety of free websites available that can help you streamline tasks, boost creativity, and make work life easier. Below are ten must-have websites that every professional should bookmark. PDF24 ToolsNeed to edit a […]

Employees are the lifeblood of an organization. How they interact within your company and with your customers directly correlates to a company’s success. Therefore, when organizations improve employee engagement, their business thrives. Employee engagement, or the enthusiasm and dedication employees feel toward their employer, is crucial in creating a positive and productive work environment. When […]

On Fridays I will post a Lean related Quote. Throughout our lifetimes many people touch our lives and leave us with words of wisdom. These can both be a source of new learning and also a point to pause and reflect upon lessons we have learned. Within Lean active learning is an important aspect on […]

This is a personal guided tour of regression techniques intended for manufacturing professionals involved with quality. Starting from “historical monuments” like simple linear regression and multiple regression, it goes through “mid-century modern” developments like logistic regression. It ends with newer constructions like bootstrapping, bagging, and MARS. It is limited in scope and depth, because a […]

Thanks, as always, to Ryan McCormack for this. He always shares so much good reading, listening, and viewing here! Subscribe to get these directly from Ryan via email. News, articles, books, podcasts, and videos about how to make the workplace better. Operational Excellence, Improvement, and Innovation Global State of Operational Excellence It’s that time of […]

What is a leader’s role in creating a culture of continuous improvement? What is the real meaning of kaizen? What does “respect for people” really mean? And how can leaders be serious about what it takes to create a culture of excellence? On my fifth edition of the Japan Study Trip leadership development program – […]

I recently purchased an excellent book titled The Origin of Toyota’s Strength: Taiichi Ohno’s Kaizen Spirit. It is a commemorative book, first published in 1990 to honor the passing of Taiichi Ohno in 1990. The book consists of memorials, reprints of lectures, interviews, and articles published in years prior. It was assembled into book form by […]

Scroll down for how to subscribe, transcript, and more My guest for Episode #514 of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast is Hugh Alley, an author and consultant. He divides his time between coaching senior operational leaders in continuous improvement, training front-line leaders in core supervisory skills, and designing industrial facilities.  An industrial engineer, he has […]

If you do Lean, you are copying Toyota and their production system — probably extremely poorly, but you are copying nonetheless. After all, Lean is a copy of TPS — a rather poor copy, but a copy nonetheless. And if the mantra has long been “don’t copy Toyota,” why was Lean created? Anyway, all of […]

Building a Culture of Continuous Improvement: Insights from Senior Leaders Do you and your leadership team feel burdened by solving all the problems that get in the way of achieving the results your organization needs? You’re not alone. This is the crux of the leadership challenge: transitioning from being the primary problem-solver to a transformational […]

In quality, regression serves to identify substitutes for true characteristics that are hard to observe and to find the root causes of technically challenging process problems. It is a major topic in data science, but oddly, the most extensive coverage I could find in the literature on quality is in Shewhart’s first book, from 1931! Later books, including Shewhart’s second, discuss […]

On LeanMag: Be Careful Before Standardizing Your Problem Solving You might be surprised to hear a lean advocate warning against a standardization. To be clear, I’m warning against both over-standardization and overly-rigid application of standardization. Standardization within problem solving is tremendously beneficial. First, it helps us train people on methods. Second, it reduces the friction […]

For about 50 years, many people have been very fond of Toyota’s management system, the Toyota Production System (inclusive of The Toyota Way). Yet for all of the love of this truly innovative system of management, there is surprisingly little evidence of true Just-in-Time production, jidoka, the daily practice of kaizen, “respect for people” and […]

By Pascal Dennis (bio) Big Company Disease has many causes. One of the most subtle is our inability to ‘wrap our arms around’ the PDCA cycle. Myriad improvement cycles begin – but they become fragmented: Group A develops the Plan, Group B deploys, Group C checks the Plan, and Group D adjusts it. I call […]

I recently purchased an excellent book titled The Origin of Toyota’s Strength: Taiichi Ohno’s Improvement Spirit. It is a commemorative book, first published in 1990 to commemorate the death of Taiichi Ohno in 1990. The book consists of reprints of interviews and articles published in years prior. It was assembled into book form by the editors […]

The Shainin System is a powerful methodology that has transformed problem-solving in the manufacturing sector. Developed by Dorian Shainin, this approach, often referred to as Statistical Engineering, focuses on identifying and eliminating the most significant source of variation within a process, known as the “Red X®.” Unlike other problem-solving methods, the Shainin System emphasizes simplicity, […]