Are you an entrepreneur looking to start or scale up your business? Or a decision maker planning to grow your company? Look no further than Mississauga, Ontario’s thriving second largest economy. Home to thousands of innovative companies in sectors such as IT, Life Sciences, Clean Tech, and Advanced Manufacturing, Mississauga is a hotbed of innovation […]

I bet many of you know the famous “Chocolate Factory” scene from the TV classic “I Love Lucy.” Even if you’re too young to know the series or Lucille Ball, I bet many of you have seen this in a Lean training class. I can’t count how many times I’ve seen it. In a meeting […]

Scroll down for how to subscribe, transcript, and more Joining us for Episode #466 of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast is a returning guest, Billy Taylor. Since his last appearance, Billy has written and released a great book titled The Winning Link: A Proven Process to Define, Align, and Execute Strategy at Every Level. Billy […]

You can’t make the right decisions from the meeting room. You have to go, watch, and learn. In Lean, we talk about “going to the Gemba” or Gemba Walks. The Gemba means the “place where value is created”. The idea is simple; if you want to improve your business, you need to learn more about […]

Do you want to ensure that your business’s products and services meet customer expectations and requirements? Advanced Product Quality Planning (APQP) may be the platform for you. APQP is a disciplined approach designed to help improve overall product quality by identifying potential issues before they arise. This process focuses on improving all aspects of a […]

Flexible assembly lines are well known at Toyota – except that there are two types of “flexible assembly lines.” The well-known one is making multiple different models on the same line. But Toyota has developed a new type of flexible assembly line, where the entire layout of the assembly line can be changed quickly and […]

One of the fundamental principles of continuous improvement is that positive change is the responsibility of every employee. Embracing that idea is far easier than making it a day-to-day reality. One powerful tool for keeping improvement work top-of-mind is the daily huddle. Whether your team works together in person or includes remote workers, daily huddles […]

FEATURE – We start the new year with a reminder to put customers first, always. It is they who make our business and keep our lean initiatives true, says the author. Words: Michael Ballé Take a pen and the back of an envelope and sketch your business. Indulge me, here. Just draw whatever comes to […]

Kaizen events effectively bring operational improvements and cost savings to an organization or even into your life. The word “Kaizen” is a Japanese word which means improvement.  These events are a key tool in the Kaizen process and involve teams of employees and stakeholders working together to identify and quickly implement changes to processes or […]

By Pascal Dennis (bio) Been thinking a great deal about this. Fred Taylor was the genius who, essentially, invented Industrial Engineering. Taylor’s innovations around time & motion studies, standardized work and scientific management helped to revolutionize manufacturing. But by all accounts, he was a lousy manager. (If you’re interested, Kanigel’s The Enigma of Efficiency is […]

I’ve mentioned before that I’m writing a book based on — inspired by — the interviews, stories, and insights from my guests on the My Favorite Mistake podcast. The book isn’t just a collection of transcripts of those stories. That would be a long book, and I’d like to add more value to the reader […]

Recently I was reviewing a management book by AMA that described many management practices to improve your ability. There was one that struck me as a bit outdated, Management by Wandering Around, also management by walking around (MBWA).  In the early 1980’s, management gurus Tom Peters and Robert Waterman used the term ‘management by walking […]

PDCA was initially called the Shewhart cycle after its founder, Walter Shewhart, but the Japanese renamed it the Deming Cycle in 1950. It is used to manage processes and systems. Now we follow PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) in the context of problem-solving. In the Plan phase, we need to define a problem, establish an objective to be […]

One-on-one meetings, also known as individual meetings or check-ins, are a type of meeting between a manager and an individual employee. These meetings provide a regular opportunity for the employee and manager to connect, discuss work-related issues, and track progress toward goals and objectives. Introduction: Begin the meeting by briefly reviewing the purpose of the […]

In this factory, to strengthen 5S sustainability, the 5S standard was located at the right place, close to the workstation.The 5S Standard is a simple one-page combination of dot points to provide a simple explanation and a photo of “what good looks like”. After the Team has transformed the area with the first 3Ss, the […]

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 […]

What is Total Productive Maintenance? Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) is a strategy that strives to achieve perfect production through the active involvement of all supporting departments. The goal of TPM is to eliminate the following losses: — Unplanned downtime — Employee error — Product defects — Employee accidents  — Wasted resources — Labor inefficiencies TPM […]

Organizations that embrace the continuous improvement approach to business have many great tools and techniques from which to choose. Some organizations use them as part of a structured methodology like Lean, Six Sigma, or Toyota Kata. Others leverage them on their own. Every organization has unique needs and will need to adjust each method for […]

I might not be the most financially-literate Lean practitioner out there. I’m fortunate to have an MBA on top of my engineering degrees, so I’ve had exposure to some accounting and corporate finance terms. Not everybody has that education, though. So, my colleague Chris Burnham from KaiNexus suggested that we invite an expert in Lean […]

Lean is the willingness to question one’s behaviour at every hierarchical level, learn from mistakes, and develop new solutions for a zero-waste process. Lean means constant customer-focused and value-adding thinking. When talking about lean management, we need to look at what it means in general and how it differs from lean manufacturing and reduces waste […]

A colleague from KaiNexus sent me a photo from his daughter’s third-grade classroom. It’s titled “The Magic of Growth Mindset,” a reference to the concept and the book Mindset by Carol Dweck. The Grade 3 students probably aren’t reading Dweck’s book, but there are children’s books based on growth mindset concepts. One of those is […]

In my previous post I introduced John Adair’s Action-Centered Leadership model. His Action Centered Leadership theory clearly differentiates between leadership and management. Adair’s model has 3 main elements that we will look at now in more detail. These are Task, Team, and Individual. In its visual depiction, these three circles are interconnected. This means that […]

Organizations that successfully instill a culture of continuous improvement constantly outperform the competition, regardless of size or industry. From healthcare to manufacturing and construction, and beyond, the effort and energy put into business process improvement is directly related to measurable results and financial benefits.

I am excited to continue my author interview series with longtime friend and colleague, Ken Pilone, who’s written an a great introductory book on lean transformation called Lean Leadership on a Napkin: An Executive’s Guide to Lean Transformation in Three Proven Steps. During our interview we explore many topics including insights from Ken’s nearly 20-years […]

Happy New Year! For me it’s a big anniversary: this time in 2013 I had spent the New Year’s break taking the principles and practices of the Kanban Method, and from them abstracting a system of nine values. Then on January 3rd, I published Introducing Kanban through its values. Kanban’s values model was born. Nine values […]

In Japan, there is omotenashi. In its basic translation, the word means hospitality. But even in Japan, it means something else: it is the aim for perfection with a customer. This idea can be extended to product design, aiming for a product that gives the customer a perfect experience. The Word Omotenashi The word omotenashi […]

With the hustle of the holidays over we turn to the New Year.  This is the time of year when people are trying to turn over a new leaf. The New Year is the perfect time to make a change. This is when people make New Year’s Resolutions. But good intentions tend to fade out […]

Charts like this always make me wonder why we throw away the additional context of data from 2016 when we start the 2017 chart. It’s unlikely that January 1st in any given year is the magical creation of a new system or a new process. In other words, January 2017 was likely the same process […]

This is the back story to the book A Changed Perspective. People do not often realize that the idea for a book can percolate for a long time. The idea sits in the back of your mind, waiting for the right time to emerge. In the interim, other work — teaching, training, coaching, etc. — […]

For some 20 years I have been writing and teaching about leadership information processing. My primary concern has been blocked information flows, which, like hypertension (high blood pressure), is the “silent killer” of companies. The calamities caused by blocked information flows impact all stakeholders and are very expensive to correct. But how do we avoid […]

Cpk and Ppk are both measures of process capability, which is a way to evaluate the ability of a manufacturing process to produce parts within specified tolerances. They are used to assess whether a process is capable of consistently producing parts that meet the required specifications and to identify areas for improvement if the process […]

PDCA stands for “Plan-Do-Check-Act.” It is a four-step management method used for continuous improvement and problem-solving. The 8-step version of PDCA is a more detailed version of the original 4-step process, and it is often used in businesses and organizations as a systematic approach to problem-solving and continuous improvement. The 8-step PDCA process involves the […]

Project management is a discipline that involves planning, organizing, and managing resources to achieve specific goals and objectives. It consists of several key processes and tools, including scope definition, scheduling, budgeting, risk management, quality assurance, communication, resource management, stakeholder management, change management, status reporting, and earned value management. Project management is used in various contexts, […]

There are various lean programs, one of them being world class manufacturing (WCM), and that is what we’ll be focusing on here today. World Class Manufacturing Defined Fiat, an Italian automobile manufacturer, and the best European and Japanese experts came together with the goal of enhancing production standards to a recognized world standard. As a […]