Pens I give to students at the end of the course, as a reminder to apply what they learned to their job. I have been teaching Lean leadership to graduate students for 15 years. They are mostly full-time working professions ranging from individual contributors to mid-level managers from a wide range of manufacturing and service […]

In recent years I have received condemnation and censure for blog posts that I have written that criticize “Lean,” the MIT research that resulted in “Lean,” the work of James P. Womack and Daniel T. Jones, and the work of the Lean Enterprise Institute and the Lean Enterprise Academy. My motives have been questioned as […]

I hope you’ll join me Thursday as I present a free webinar as part of the KaiNexus Continuous Improvement Webinar series: Psychological Safety as a Foundation for Continuous Improvement This is a webinar version of a talk I gave two weeks ago at the annual KaiNexus User Conference, KaiNexicon. I think it went well, but […]

The Wisconsin Policy Research Institute recently published a report titled: “The Trouble with Tenure” (February 2016). Click here to view the report. In the Executive Summary, page 5, the authors present an interesting and very challenging recommendation: “…the Board of Regents… should also undertake a systemic review of whether tenure is appropriate and necessary on all campuses […]

Setting clear and measurable goals has become crucial in the era of ambitious goals and result-driven businesses. One of the most influential methodologies to emerge from this drive toward clarity and measurability is the Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) framework. Initially popularized in Silicon Valley, OKRs have become a critical difference in goal-setting and management […]

Training Within Industry and its modules Job Instructions, Job Relations, and Job Methods are well known. But (thanks to Mark Warren) I just recently learned about another module: Job Instructions for Second-Line Supervisors (nowadays called managers). This is a hierarchy level higher, and the goal is to support and guide the shop floor supervisors on […]

Is problem-solving more or less important in an AI-enabled world? There is a lot of talk about AI, and ChatGPT in particular, and mostly whether it is inherently good or inherently bad. But let’s accept the premise that it is part of our future. We’ve actually been heading here for a long time. How will […]

One of new things that I have started doing in my graduate courses is to challenge students to determine what answers they are seeking from the course, which in turns ask them to identify questions that they must ask. It is part of my evolution in Lean teaching, to make learning more a pull system instead […]

The feedback I have received recently about some of my controversial blog posts (here, here, here, here, and here) have led some people to question my motivations. In particular, accusations about common motivations such as fame or financial gain, and also some weirder motivations. So, let me address these here. My motivations, from the beginning, are […]

The purpose of a company is to satisfy customer’s needs by making products and services. To do this, humans must to have knowledge. Knowledge comes from learning. However, learning alone is insufficient. Skills must be developed, which comes from practice. Practice is the result of a routine, or process, developed to make a product or service. As […]

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 […]

The leaders of organizations adopt Lean management in the hope of achieving desirable outcomes such as higher quality, shorter lead-times, lower costs, and so on. In most cases, cost reduction is a major objective and is of particular interest to senior managers. Yet, the magnitude of cost reduction achieved usually ends up being far less […]

Leader’s behaviors seem to be the Holy Grail for the Lean community. It’s not. The image at right is from the Lean Enterprise Institute’s Lean Transformation Summit, held on 17-18 March in Las Vegas, and shows the results of a survey. The question is: “In your company, which of the five dimensions represents the biggest challenge?” […]

Universities have come under much criticism in recent years from business leaders, political leaders, and the public for being slow to change and improve. There is truth to this because the method used for change is what I call “stick-slip.” Stick-slip is a term used in science and engineering that refers to a phenomenon in […]

No, at least not to the discriminating eye, as shown in the above image (click on image to enlarge). That does not mean Lean is bad or that one cannot achieve some great things with Lean. But it is important to understand that Lean and TPS are not the same, and therefore the results that […]

Breathtaking Innovation Sure to be Used Throughout Public Higher Education! As you are no doubt well aware, I am internationally recognized for my many teaching innovations in higher education. Now, I can add one more teaching innovation to the already extensive list of “firsts” on my impressively long curriculum vitae. I have invented the Professor’s […]

We greatly admire Toyota’s production system and their overall management system. But what we don’t appreciate is the engineering mindset that created this unique and innovative system of management. We also do not appreciate that this could be a principal reason why the leaders of most organizations struggle with Lean. In particular, the mechanical engineering […]

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 […]