Get Lean and Prosper
"Get Lean and Prosper" features news, commentary, case studies, and instructions on Lean manufacturing methodologies and Lean transformation.
Mike Hoseus Webinar on Toyota Culture
Industry Week Webinar - To Register The other day, I watched the online archive of a webinar given by Mike Hoseus, co-author of Toyota Culture: The Heart and Soul of the Toyota Way. You can use the link at the top of this post to listen the free audio archive (with registration) and even download the slides in PDF form. The message that he sent is applicable to any industry. One story that intrigu ...... Read More
Comments (0)Management Improvement Carnival #79
Again, I’m very happy to host the Carnival for John Hunter and his Curious Cat blog. My job here is to share some noteworthy and thought provoking posts from the past month. I hope you’ll discover a new blog or two (or new idea) in the process. My Carnival selections run the gamut from manufacturing to healthcare to other industries, but I hope it will help you see the common themes ...... Read More
Comments (0)Hotels Give "Lean" a Bad Name??
Housekeepers’ Giant “Hope Quilt” Puts Hotel Job Injuries in Spotlight | Labor Notes Articles like this are incredibly frustrating to see. It makes me think of a variation of the famous Bon Jovi song that would go something like “You Give Lean a Bad Name.” As Jamie pointed out in the comments, this is totally “L.A.M.E.” One problem the Lean community ...... Read More
Comments (0)Lean Methods for Aerospace and Healthcare in Ontario
Article - How Toyota builds cars Here’s an article from Canada about how Toyota (an automaker) manages to be influential to Bombardier (maker of planes) and St. Joseph’s Hospital in Hamilton, Ontario (a fixer of people). The article, I think, somewhat overplays the value of metrics. Don’t get me wrong, performance measures are important in manufacturing or healthcare — ...... Read More
Comments (0)Change from Inside or Outside of the System
Last week, I tweeted a quote that’s supposedly from Dr. W. Edwards Deming. I can only find one other online reference… does this sound like something Deming would have said? “Knowledge required to change the existing system to a better system must come from outside the existing system.” A few folks on Twitter seemed to challenge that assertion (hard to tell tone in 14 ...... Read More
Comments (1)5S the Coffee Pots
It’s time for some coffee talk other than Starbucks… afternoon coffee break here. In Philadelphia last month during our LEI workshops (have you seen our new web design?), I was there three days, teaching my workshop for two and attending one other day. Day One, the Regular coffee was to the left and Decaf was to the right. Each was clearly labeled, no big deal. Day Two, the hotel sta ...... Read More
Comments (0)Innovation Is as Innovation Does?
Dispatches from the Frontier: Innovation as Outcome This story also seems like it couldn’t be true, from the Harga-Blog: I once asked a class full of senior executives whether they wanted innovation. They all said yes. When I then asked whether they wanted their direct reports to spend time developing and experimenting with new ways of doing their work, they all said no. They wanted innova ...... Read More
Comments (0)Leadership Lessons from Larry Kellner
Corner Office - Bad News or Good, Continental’s Chief Wants to Know - Question - NYTimes.com This interview with Larry Keller, CEO of Continental Airlines, had elements of “Like Lean” — ideas that are similar to Toyota Production System or Lean approaches. Sometimes it’s just coincidence or common sense (like here) or the people involved are just downplaying Toyo ...... Read More
Comments (0)Video about Lean Startups
Gov 2.0 Summit 09: Eric Ries, “Lean Startups: Doing More with Less” I was tipped off a while back to the work Eric Ries is doing around Lean concepts in startups (here is his blog). Eric says that it’s not the original idea of a company matters, but how they adapt and evolve. This reminds of Steve Spear’s theme in Chasing the Rabbit that they key is how quickly an organ ...... Read More
Comments (0)Defects in Air Travel -- At Least I Got There Safely
Ah, what a day I had two weeks back. You’d think getting from Boston to Philadelphia would be easy. I’m here, teaching my “Key Concepts of Lean in Healthcare” workshop for the first time for LEI. I got to Logan a little before 1 PM for my 2:30 PM flight. I got a call from the airline (part of which used to have the nickname “America Worst”) that the flight ...... Read More
Comments (0)Muda (Waste) Driven By Government Protectionism
To Outfox the Chicken Tax, Ford Strips Its Own Vans - WSJ.com If people and organizations are good at anything, it’s gaming a system or finding workarounds. From a recent WSJ article comes a tale of how Ford works around import tariffs: Several times a month, Transit Connect vans from a Ford Motor Co. factory in Turkey roll off a ship here shiny and new, rear side windows gleaming, back sea ...... Read More
Comments (0)Silver Bullets and Easy Answers -- Always Appealing
While in Boston, I’m getting the chance to sit in on some sessions of an MIT Seminar in Healthcare Systems Innovation. Today, the session that focused a lot of Lean as a means to improve quality and cost. Lean is the focus of a few class sessions, including guest lectures from MIT’s Deborah Nightingale and Steve Spear. It’s great that Lean is being given such attention. The pr ...... Read More
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