At the end of each semester a survey is distributed in class for students to fill out. The professor typically receives the completed surveys a few weeks later, after they have been reviewed by the department chair and head of the faculty evaluation committee. I have always found the feedback valuable for improving my courses, […]

It’s time to face the raw reality of Lean head-on. As a Lean practitioner or promoter, you need to confront these 10 harsh truths about Lean: 😬 1. From the start in 1988, the premise upon which Lean management rests is that top leaders want Lean management. It should have started with the premise that […]

In my books I have written much about a connection that most leaders and academics ignore: bad processes lead to bad leadership behaviors. This is a critically important connection because it reveals the time and information function of leadership. What leaders believe in and how they behave largely determines how well information is conveyed in time […]

Where did the credit hour unit of measurement in higher education come from? It came from Morris Llewellyn Cooke, in a report he wrote in 1910 titled: “Academic and Industrial Efficiency: A Report to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching,” Cooke was a close colleague of Frederick Winslow Taylor, and a key contributor […]

Question: How do you evaluate weekly graded assignments when you have 300 students in a class? Answer: One way to do that would be borrow a few Lean concepts such as single-point learning lessons and go/no-go plug gauges. Whether you have 30 or 300 students, the idea is assure that the weekly graded assignment is […]

In June of 2001, I visited Toyota’s Motomachi plant in Japan and asked the General Manager of final assembly, Mr. Kuzuhara, the following question: “What is the mechanism or process for maintaining discipline to ‘The Toyota Way?’” He replied: “There was nothing on paper. It was just passed on to employees generation after generation by […]

It has been nearly 11 years since the start of the academic kaizens that I organized and led at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Hartford, Connecticut, campus). This was the first time ever that kaizen was used to improve an accredited academic degree program. Since then, there has been a lot of kaizen in higher ed for […]

Our job as advocates of REAL Lean has been to humanize the workplace mainly by showing leaders and managers that the “Respect for People” principle is a business necessity rather than something that is optional, by showing how the “Continuous Improvement” and “Respect for People” principles are interrelated, and that it is the “Respect for People” principle […]

In 1988, at the dawn of the “Lean” era (LE), The Kaizen Institute of America held a very important seminar on the Toyota Production System and kaizen at The Hartford Graduate Center (now Rensselaer) in Hartford, Connecticut. Click on the image to view the historic brochure used to advertise the seminars more than 25 years ago. Click on image to […]

I have taught in a regional comprehensive public university since 2005. In that time there have been tremendous changes in the external environment. However, there has not been much change internally (the same is true for most regional public universities). That outcome is not favorable for serving students or for the long-term survival of the […]

In a recent episode of The Lean Effect Podcast, Mark De Jong sat down with our very own Matt Banna, Enterprise Account Executive at KaiNexus, to delve into the world of employee engagement, executive buy-in, and process improvement. Here are some highlights from the episode:

Below is a screen shot from Ford Motor Company’s web site celebrating the 100th anniversary of the  moving assembly line (7 October 2013). (What would Henry Ford have to say about the stock price shown so prominently below one of his signature accomplishments? I bet he’d be really annoyed and have it removed). While we […]

Few people realize that my work in Lean leadership originated with the need to improve my own leadership skills. In 1994, I was promoted to the role of business unit manager at Pratt & Whitney’s Rocky Hill, Conn., facility. A few months prior to my arrival, the facility started to implement Toyota’s production system, facilitated […]

We, at KaiNexus, are fortunate to have the opportunity to chat with business leaders across the spectrum about the challenges and opportunities they face. Most conversations involve employee engagement, operational excellence, and customer satisfaction.  Continuous improvement is the relentless pursuit of incremental betterment through iterative refinements and innovative adaptations. Lean manufacturing is a systematic approach […]

Syllabi in higher education are normally multi-page documents more akin to contracts than helpful work instructions for students. I have always applied Lean thinking to my syllabi to produce the shortest syllabi possible, given the format that we are required to conform to. My syllabi are 3-4 pages, easy to read and visually appealing, and […]

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 […]

The conventional view of accreditation among those outside higher education (and some inside) is that it punishes those universities and departments that try to do things differently. In my experience, accreditation – nothing more than an audit to a standard – gives universities and departments lots of room to do things differently. So maybe accreditation bodies […]

Since the early 1900s, economists have believed in a concept called “economies of scale,” which means a savings of resources (money, material, equipment, space, energy, people, time, etc.) in production due to size. The image below shows an economies of scale cost curve, expressing the relationship between cost and volume, which has been very influential […]

This is the back story to the workbook Practical Lean Leadership. Throughout the late 1990s, I wrote several papers about Lean leadership that were published in peer-reviewed, practitioner-oriented academic journals. They were titled: “Continuous Personal Improvement,” “Lean Behaviors,” “Linking Leaders’ Beliefs to Their Behaviors and Competencies,” “Using Value Stream Maps to Improve Leadership,” “Leaders Lost […]

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 Agility, not ‘Agile’ Scientific thinking is an ingredient in your operational excellence culture, not […]

It is well known in the world of retail sales that customers prefer to buy a $200 item discounted to $125, rather than pay $125 for the same item with no discount (as JC Penney recently found out). This article, “Colleges Try Cutting Tuition – and Aid Packages,” (WSJ, 10 October 2013) indicates the same […]

In each of the organizations that I have worked in, the mandate for EH&S departments has been principally related to physical safety, ergonomics, and compliance to various laws and regulations. While the focus on physical safety is admirable, it does not go far enough. It must also include mental safety, which is most often compromised […]

Digital forms are becoming more widely adopted by organizations. This is because the ability to collect and analyze data effectively has become increasingly important to businesses. Companies gather, examine, process and build reports on large volumes of data. So, they need an easier and faster way to manage these processes. In today’s blog, we get […]

Celebration-5W is Agendashift’s trusty and energising context-capturing kickoff exercise. I say “trusty”, because I don’t think I have ever experienced a workshop that used it suffer for lack of context, and there have been times when I have regretted not using it. But could it be used inappropriately? Before answering that question, a reminder of […]

I rarely use textbooks in the courses that I teach (most of which relate to some aspect of business or management). The reason why is that I often find large gaps between what is written and what actually happens in most workplaces – not to mention the lack of Lean thinking in the writing. Most textbooks […]

This post shares a story I heard at the Michigan Lean Consortium annual conference earlier this week. They’ve been kind about sharing ideas and doing a book club discussion around my new book, The Mistakes That Make Us: Cultivating a Culture of Learning and Innovation. There was a Q&A session with me on Tuesday and […]

In this article, “Gee’s Next Act,” former Ohio State University president E. Gordon Gee is charged by Ohio’s governor with figuring out how to reduce college costs and improve quality. Here is the key quote: “[Ohio Governor] Kasich hinted that the solution could be found amid a mix of privatization, commercialization [of intellectual property], dual enrollment […]

What we call “Lean management” today actually represents a 125-plus year evolution of progressive management practice. Early efforts by management practitioners to improve (or “systematize”) manufacturing operations soon gave way to a broader recognition of the applicability of progressive management principles and practices to service organizations and government (though there were only a few examples […]

A lot of people ask me: “Why do you self-publish? Wouldn’t it be better to have your books published by a big publisher?” They say it would give me greater legitimacy and a broader reach. If one has solid credentials as I do, then there is no need to seek legitimacy. Besides, the only thing […]

When I hear about the Lean transformations going on at companies today, both large and small, I find they are quite different compared to what I experienced nearly 20 years ago. Back then, our Lean transformation was based on the simple ideas of: We’ve got a ton of problems affecting our customers. Lets improve things […]

I’m at the Traverse City airport as I depart the excellent Michigan Lean Consortium annual conference. Today, I learned that the audiobook version of my book, The Mistakes That Make Us: Cultivating a Culture of Learning and Innovation, has been approved by Audible / Amazon, so it’s available both places now and also Apple Books. […]

What did you notice about the better teachers that you had when you were a student? It was probably a just a few things such as: Organized Enthusiastic Good communicators Easy to understand Practical Connected the material to your world At the end of the course you probably said to yourself, “That was a good […]

The renowned football coach and philosopher, Vince Lombardi, once said, “Perfection is unattainable, but if we chase perfection, we catch excellence.” That’s the mindset of a Lean organization. There’s a bedrock belief that every process, investment, employee, or action should directly translate to value for the customer with no waste. That ideal is unattainable, of […]

The Lean professor – educated for 12 years as an engineer (3 degrees, mechanical, chemical, materials, plus applied math major), in practice for 7 years, and author of 10 research papers published in top-tier materials engineering journals – loves the humanities, and so should you. Lately it has become common for people to view college and university […]