It seems most people think kaizen is easy to know and do, when in fact it is challenging and of strategic importance to any business. Therefore, efforts should be made to master kaizen. Instead, people are overconfident and they make changes to kaizen without fully comprehending the effect that the changes will have on people […]

Here are eight questions that my students ask me from time-to-time, along with my answers, which you may be interested in as well: All your degrees are in engineering. How did you get into Lean management? Dilbert cartoons frequently present a stereotype of engineers as those who seek facts, logic, and good decision-making, and are […]

The researcher found the eight essential people skills after a decade of investigation. The researchers study and review the feedback and opinions from hundreds of industry, government, and academic areas of people. These eight essential skills of people were declared as one of the excellent skills of project leaders for managing tenacious – individuals in […]

By Pascal Dennis I used to think the so-called ‘Seven QC Tools’ were second nature to everybody. Now I realize that our younger friends & colleagues may not have been as fortunate as we (somewhat) wily veterans. When I graduated engineering school in the 1980’s (prehistoric times) Ed Deming, Joe Juran, Philip Crosby and other […]

Think deeply about this: What activity did Toyota employees engage in to eventually get to what became known as the Toyota Production System and The Toyota Way? What was Toyota’s secret? It was kaizen. But, not just any type of kaizen. It was Toyota’s own creative adaptation of kaizen to meet its evolving business needs, […]

A recent article, “If Colleges Are Dismantled, Consider the Impact on Their Cities” (The Chronicle of Higher Education, 16 October 16), makes a good argument for the negative effect that unbundling university services can have on a community. But what is more important is the impact that unbundling can have on students. The passage of […]

Interview of Professor Bob Emiliani in the 20 October 2016 issue of Production Manager magazine (Poland). According to you, Toyota Production System has its roots in the American Progressive Era. Why? The technical basis of the Toyota Production System (TPS) is rooted in Industrial Engineering (IE) developed by Frederick Winslow Taylor and Frank Bunker Gilbreth circa […]

Memorial Day is a time when we come together and honor those who have given the ultimate sacrifice to their country. Since its formal creation in 1971, Americans come together to honor the fallen by visiting cemeteries, memorials, or holding family gatherings to celebrate the freedom that was earned through sacrifice. In addition to picnics […]

Is Lean thinking the same as kaizen thinking? Kaizen thinking is a unique way of thinking that is learned when one participates in Toyota-style kaizen. This type of kaizen is rooted in industrial engineering (IE) methods and is practiced for the purpose of improving productivity, with a goal of reducing cost (where “cost” is understood […]

…very helpful when it comes to learning from history to better understand the present. Click to on the image to enlarge it. One of my great interests is to read books and papers from the early days of industrial engineering and its transformation into progressive management. This time period, circa 1890-1935, interests me because Scientific […]

Here are 13 words that I appreciate more and more with each passing day: “Our way of thinking is very difficult to copy or even to understand.” Fujio Cho, former president and chairman of Toyota (and who worked under Taiichi Ohno), said this about Toyota’s management practices in the context of Toyota managers – not […]

Originally posted a few years ago, I’m reposting this for the holiday here in the U.S. The post Memorial Day – A Day of Remembrance by Mark Graban appeared first at Lean Blog.

Fifteen years ago, Art Byrne suggested to me that the title of our book about The Wiremold Company’s Lean transformation should be Lean Strategy. I resisted that suggestion because I did not view Lean as a corporate strategy, despite Art’s firm belief that it is. Who was right, me or Art? First, let’s ask an important question: […]

Historical parallels are never exact. But, they are often eerily similar to one another in circumstances and outcomes. Let’s have a look at the parallels between Scientific Management 100 years ago and Toyota Management (combination of Toyota Production System and The Toyota Way) today. Frederick Winslow Taylor is acknowledged as the creator of Scientific Management. But […]

The vast majority of Lean transformation efforts that I see progress at a pace that I find tremendously disappointing. Improvement is slow and plodding, and with little enthusiasm. It is somnolent Lean; Lean with no drama. Yet, the condition that I find most businesses in tells me that it is in a state of emergency. […]

Imagine a world where learning is a non-negotiable aspect of the job, where the concept of failure is perceived as an opportunity to grow rather than defeat. That is the world at Toyota, the global automotive leader. This culture of relentless learning has become so integral to the company that it is considered a norm […]

Scientific Management and the Efficiency Movement had its heyday during the 30-year period between 1910 to 1940 and then faded from existence. It seems that those business leaders who were interested in improving management had done so to their satisfaction after five or 10 years of effort during that 30-year period. After that, top managers believed […]

A robust, growing economy is what politicians and citizens alike want, in part because growth hides the many problems that stagnation reveals (where stagnation is considered less than 2 percent economic growth per year). Economists prescriptions for economic growth (3 to 5 percent annually) depend heavily policies and actions that they hope will drive productivity […]

Think like a child. One of the things that attracted me to Toyota’s management practice years ago was the requirement that people must be respected in order for continuous improvement to take place. This includes all stakeholders – employees, suppliers, customers, inventors, and communities. Toyota’s management system is a significant break from the poor way […]

As an experienced PMP Consultant, I have witnessed the transformative power of effective mentoring on careers, teams, and organizations. Over my twenty-year journey, I have learned that mentoring is a multi-dimensional process that goes beyond merely sharing knowledge. It involves various aspects, including training, goal-setting, motivation, advice-giving, success-achieving, direction-providing, support-giving, and coaching. In this post, […]

Since my books Lean Teaching and Lean University were published in June 2015, Lean University has sold at 2.5 times the pace of Lean Teaching. What might these sales results suggest? Sales of Lean University over Lean Teaching indicate that university leaders are more interested in Lean for administrative work than they are for academic […]

Click on image to enlarge. I was recently asked an interesting question: “We want to introduce Lean to our workforce. What advice do you have for a president on the structure and content of an inspirational lecture to introduce Lean?” The word “inspirational” is what makes this question interesting to me. Lean is usually introduced […]

It’s not that universities don’t improve, it’s just that they improve far too slowly and therefore are not in step with the times. What causes that? There are many factors, of course, but let’s consider the role of accreditation on causing slow improvement in academic programs and administrative support. The various accrediting bodies publish standards. […]

Higher education has been steadily moving from it’s long-term position as a sellers’ market to a buyers’ market. College and university leaders seem slow to grasp this fact. They, as well as those who do grasp this fact, would be wise to adopt this mindset given current market conditions and to lead daily process improvement, […]

In my view, the United Kingdom has led the world in the advancement of Lean management in higher education (click here to learn more) – but with two important qualifications: Application has been mainly in administrative processes, not in teaching and other academic processes. An emphasis on measuring the results of improvement “projects.” I’d like […]

Many discussions about project management overlook the significance of the crucial early choices that shape the project execution approach. Decisions such as employing Agile or Waterfall methodologies, or choosing between prefabrication and on-site assembly, may not alter the expected project output, but they can greatly affect the delivery process and the project’s likely success. The […]

One of my great interests is reading books from the early 1900s that describe the troubles in higher education and the means by which people thought to eliminate problems and improve processes. The period 1910-1915 saw a lot of interest in applying the then-new Scientific Management to process problems in teaching and administration in higher […]

Click on image to enlarge. The image at right depicts the greatest unsolved problem in all of business: How to move CEOs and senior management teams from bottom to top – from conventional management to progressive (Toyota-style) management. The story begins around 100 years ago, when the proponents of Scientific Management began to realize that […]

Anyone interested in continuous improvement should be thoroughly displeased with how kaizen has been so effectively separated from Lean. It seems that most people simply don’t care about kaizen these days. That’s just terrible. Oddly, disinterest in kaizen is fueled by interest in Lean tools. Yet, many Lean tools are derived from kaizen itself or from […]

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 […]

A common feature of large organizations is to have many leadership development programs running in parallel. There is a corporate leadership development program, perhaps division-specific leadership development programs, and then many function-specific leadership development programs: finance, manufacturing, supply chain, engineering, IT, human resources, and so on. Leadership development programs can be “owned” by the training group, […]

A recent op-ed article in my university’s student-run newspaper, written by a soon-to-be graduating senior, questioned the wisdom of cumulative final exams (click here to read the article).  It’s great to see a student putting their critical thinking skills to use. Professors should do the same. The student, Lauren Lustgarten, said: “Instead [of final exams], professors […]

Continuous improvement tools and techniques play a huge role in a company’s lean manufacturing journey. That is to say, depending on which tools and techniques they choose to implement, this can lead to reduced errors, improved productivity, and overall, a greater profitability. There are various continuous improvement tools and techniques that can help a manufacturing […]

Click on image to enlarge. Most leaders introduce Lean by dryly articulating business needs, followed by a high-level explanation of Lean, and then present the technical details of the implementation plan. They leave out the social details, believing them to be unimportant. I call this the “Lean for Owners” method. I would not introduce Lean […]