Lean was on my brain traveling home yesterday. Mostly bad examples, but one thing jumped out at me, somewhat positive. I love the TPS notion of “explaining why” (and blogged about it here after touring NUMMI). In the Lean and…
Sharing thoughts, ideas and suggestions on hardwiring success I’ve written before about former hospital CEO and healthcare consultant Quint Studer and his amazing book “Hardwiring Excellence.” I think it’s a great book even for manufacturing folks. Quint now has a…
Materials costs force GM to raise prices Yet another example of a non-lean mindset company thinking they are entitled to price increases because costs went up. General Motors Corp. has raised prices an average of 0.5 percent on about one-third…
By Luke Van Dongen For me, the topic of applying lean principles and tools to the classroom was the best part of the Linking Lean Thinking to Education conference. Admittedly, I am biased by the fact that this is the…
Tale of a Warehouse Shows How Chicago Weathers a Decline – WSJ.com The article linked to above is OK, about how Chicago is diversifying its economy away from manufacturing. What jumped out at me was this picture, though, also shown…
By Mark Edmondson, LEAN Affiliates Last week I had three unrelated yet similar phone conversations that you, an executive in pursuit of excellence, may find of interest. These calls had several similarities: – All are with experienced mid-level professionals (they…
By Luke Van Dongen I was very fortunate to have met Bob Emiliani at the Linking Lean Thinking to Education conference in Worcester Mass last month. Bob has a wonderful combination of industry and academic experience and has several publications…
Businesses may move health care overseas – Yahoo! News I’m by no means a protectionist, nor do I automatically think any doctors or hospitals outside the U.S. would automatically be inferior… But, that said, I’m VERY uncomfortable with the idea…
… and the system sucks!” That was the final line of a recent episode of ER that we just watched last night (thanks to the DVR). The major focus of the episode was a patient in court with a claim…
My apologies for the delay in following through with posts from the EdNet / LEAN conference. Here’s a bit on one of the presentations from the conference that I’m sure will spur on some discussion. Randall Cook from Utah State…
LeanBlog Podcast Episode #9 is a discussion with David Mann, the author of the excellent book Creating A Lean Culture: Tools To Sustain Lean Conversions. In this episode, we will talk about Steelcase’s experience with their lean efforts and the…
Deja Vu – WSJ.com “Early Industry Expert Soon Realized a Staff Had Its Own Efficiency” The WSJ has it wrong on manufacturing, once again. Not that I expect the Wall Street Journal to be a friend of the “working man,”…
