The following post is adapted and expanded material I decided not to include in my book The Mistakes That Make Us: Cultivating a Culture of Learning and Innovation. Maybe it was a mistake to cut it. But the material wasn’t really related to my podcast. It was based on some interactions with some Veterans Administration […]

It seems my open letter to the Lean Enterprise Institute created a stir in Lean world. My letter challenged LEI, the recognized global leader of the Lean movement, to understand the root causes of failed Lean transformations and identify practical countermeasures, for the purpose of improving the credibility of Lean management and to strengthen the Lean […]

One of the criticisms that many people have of Frederick Winslow Taylor is his sometimes negative view of laborers. Often ignored, of course, is his positive view of laborers and their potential to perform at higher levels. Critics also ignore that Taylor was a laborer, supervisor, and manager of laborers, and so he knew what […]

One of the common things I hear with respect to Lean transformation is: “One size does not fit all.” Every organization is said to be unique, and so their Lean transformation process must reflect their situation. Even Toyota people say it is so – but, notice, without providing any details. Surely there is truth in this, […]

James P. Womack, founder of the Lean Enterprise Institute, recently gave a very important talk at the 2016 Lean Transformation Summit. View the video or slides of his talk. I’d like to call your attention to slides 11, 12, and 13 – especially number 13. It seems the Lean Enterprise Institute’s advice for the next 25 years […]

Shingijutsu USA held a Super-Genba-Kaizen Workshop at a company in Connecticut last week. It was the same company that I visited several times in 2014 and 2015 where Chihiro Nakao led kaizens and which formed the basis for the book Kaizen Forever: Teachings of Chihiro Nakao. Kaizen Forever, like most books, represents a snapshot in time. […]

As you may know, I am a big fan of Shingijutsu-kaizen. Sensei from Shingijutsu trained me 22 years ago. It was a wonderful experience and has led to a life-long passion for kaizen. I have re-connected with Shingijutsu USA in recent years and have even greater appreciation for them. Many people also have strong positive […]

From the start, the Lean movement has focused on tools and methods that were unpacked from kaizen. Why? Because they are easier to sell. This was an enormous mistake – a major strategic error – that continues to this today. It’s time to refocus on kaizen. Lean tools and methods must be used within the context […]

I was having a conversation with a colleague over dinner recently and an interesting topic came up: Fealty and veneration to the words and deeds of those who, to greater or lesser extents, helped define Lean management as we understand it today. My colleague said that such intense loyalty and deep respect bordering on the […]

To this day, Lean management has yet to enter the mainstream in business. It remains solidly on the fringe, despite great efforts by many people over many decades. You almost never hear of Lean management in the business press unless the article is written by an insider such as James P. Womack or John Toussaint. […]

An important thing that the Lean community must come to grips with is what senior leaders of companies will and, more importantly, will not do. This applies to organizations of any size, but especially large companies. After nearly 30 years, we have a lot of empirical evidence on what senior leaders will not do when […]

Click on the image to view the paper (.pdf file). I’ve written a paper titled “Evolution in Lean Teaching,” which describes my recent work to expand and evolve the application of Lean principles and practices to teaching. The focus is “grading inside the process” and creating a pull system for learning in a graduate course […]

Thanks as always to Ryan McCormack for this… there’s always so much good reading, listening, and viewing shared here by him! Subscribe to get these directly from Ryan via email. Insights about improvement, innovation, and leadership… Operational Excellence, Improvement, and Innovation Extreme agile video game development “We see our game designs as hypotheses and our […]

“In music, a standard is a tune or song of established popularity” among listeners. In business, a standard is a decision of established popularity among leaders. Namely, raising prices without improving value for buyers. It is a standard decision among leaders because it results in more money with no extra effort. But good things like […]

Think about it:

Continuous improvement tools are a powerful resource in the Lean management and Lean manufacturing journey. Using the right continuous improvement tools can lead to improved productivity, reduced errors, and greater profitability. Many different continuous improvement methods and tools can help a business reach its Lean management goals. But how do you know which tools and […]

In May 2016, the Century Foundation published a report titled: “Why Performance-Based College Funding Doesn’t Work” by Prof. Nicholas Hillman. It is a good analysis of why performance-based funding is unlikely to function as intended in higher education. You should read it. However, there is one important misunderstanding contained in the report about the nature […]

Many people think that the mindset for continuous improvement is common, easy to learn, or that they possess it. This does not reflect the true situation. The improvement mindset is rare. In my profession, teaching, I see the result of my work during and after every class. There is always – always! – a gap between […]

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 […]

Today, various organizations work to spread Toyota’s thinking and practices with greater fidelity than ever before. While their efforts are well-meaning, you may want to ask yourself this question: “Is it wise to try and copy Toyota?” Most people would say “no.” Perhaps is it because they heard what Fujio Cho, one of Taiichi Ohno’s […]

How and when did Lean leadership become separate from Lean production and become its own distinct area of study and focused practice? Well, in the mid-1980s through mid-1990s, all anyone really knew or cared about was “JIT” and “Lean production,” the term introduced by John Krafcik in 1988. People’s focus was entirely on Lean in […]

FEATURE – Freeing up beds is an age-old problem for hospitals. The medical area of this Catalan hospital group has found in lean a creative way to solve it.  Words: Dr. Àlex Culla, Dr. Maria Lopez-Dieguez and Dr. Helena Camell Llari Having more beds available is the number one concern for most hospitals, and the […]

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is a saying you hear often. But, when it comes to business, this is the worst thing an organization could follow. By not improving your processes, you’d suffer from inefficient and outdated processes. So, no matter how smoothly your business is operating, every business has the potential to […]

For organizations of all types, continuous improvement is vital for building a culture of innovation, remaining competitive, ensuring employee engagement, and meeting evolving customer needs to exceed expectations. However, organizations often encounter challenges when implementing and sustaining continuous improvement programs. Addressing these challenges requires leadership commitment, employee engagement, effective communication, proper resource allocation, and a […]

Recently, we held our fun “cover reveal” party and streaming event. Thanks to everybody who attended and thanks to Elisabeth Swan for hosting! The recording is now available. For those who don’t want to watch a video, I’m going to lay out the iterations that the cover designer, Don Coon, and I went through over […]

There is a great mystery surrounding the emergence and subsequent promotion of “lean production,” the generic name given to Toyota’s production system, beginning in 1988. It is the absence of “Respect for People” for nearly 20 years. “Respect for People” was long part of the Toyota Production System (TPS). So why wasn’t it part of lean […]

What is Lean management if, for all practical purposes, there is no “Respect for People” principle to complement “Continuous Improvement?” The answer is, not much. The thing that makes Lean different, special, and extremely powerful has been removed. “Lean,” the generic term for TPS, quickly became a synonym for “continuous improvement,” devoid of Toyota-style kaizen and “Respect […]

We all make mistakes! But learning from them is what matters. It’s easier to learn and improve when we can view mistakes as being caused by bad systems instead of blaming bad people. For example, I’ve used online scheduling tools (as I’ve blogged about) over the years, starting with YouCanBook.me and recently switching to Calendly. […]

Flipped classroom? Who cares about that? The big news is that the marketplace for higher education flipped from a seller’s market to a buyers’ market starting about 15 years ago. The transition is now complete. The leaders of higher education institutions face an emergency situation, one that most still do not recognize. They still lead and […]

One of things that has long interested me about Toyota’s production system is the role that cost reduction played in its development (obtained through non-zero-sum means). It seems an obvious point of focus for any producer of goods (or services). But what is not obvious is how the unit of measure, the yen, may have […]

Around this time twenty years ago, I was on an airplane traveling to from Connecticut to Los Angeles on a day-trip (a day trip!) to meet with an important supplier to my company, Pratt & Whitney. I had just bought the book Lean Thinking a few days earlier (at an actual bookstore), and I read […]

I remember 14 years ago, as we were finishing the book Better Thinking, Better Results, Orry Fiume (retired vice president of finance and administration at The Wiremold Company) told me: “It’s a good thing not every company is Lean, otherwise there would be 30 percent unemployment.” Fortunately, we don’t have that to worry about. But […]

The 20th anniversary of the book Lean Thinking was marked on 21 September 2016 by an interview of James P. Womack and Daniel T. Jones. The interview was interesting from a number of perspectives. Below are some thoughts and critiques of selected passages from the interview: Jim Womack: Our aim was to give people a license […]

For nearly 20 years, I have been engaged in teaching the leaders of “brownfield” businesses about Lean leadership. As with all other trainers, we teach company leaders in batches and accept the many abnormal conditions that lay in front of our eyes: Long queue time to align everyone’s schedule Some leaders miss the training due to […]