It came across my LinkedIn feed again last week, and then a day later, a friend sent me the same thing from Instagram. Same story, a few words moved around, or copied word-for-word. If you spend any time in Lean…
No. The claim that “Lean is for speed and Six Sigma is for quality” misrepresents both methodologies. Lean — based on the Toyota Production System — improves safety, quality, delivery, cost, and morale (SQDCM) together, with built-in quality (jidoka) as…
Formerly known as “Lean Whiskey” Listen: In Season 2, Episode 8, Mark Graban and Jamie Flinchbaugh settle in with single-origin coffees, and circle back to a topic that’s been bouncing around the lean world for forty years: NUMMI. But first,…
TL;DR: Lean doesn’t fail because people resist change. It struggles when organizations ask for participation without earning belief. Don Ephlin saw this decades ago: behavior changes when people believe, not when they’re told to obey. That distinction still explains why…
Ford spends roughly $100,000 a year on each of its first-line production supervisors. The title on the job posting is “Process Coach” – language borrowed directly from Lean thinking. The role description talks about Sounds great, right? Online job board…
Thanks, as always, to Ryan McCormack for this. He always shares so much good reading, listening, and viewing here! Subscribe to get these directly from Ryan via email. News, articles, books, podcasts, and videos about how to make the workplace…
Tesla builds cars in what used to be the NUMMI factory, a joint venture between Toyota and GM (which meant it was run as a Toyota plant with "Lean" practices). Before that, it was a dysfunctional GM plant. Now that it's a Tesla plant, did they learn from Toyota or does it seem more like "the old GM?"
TL;DR: NUMMI proved in the 1980s what healthcare is still learning today: you can’t punish your way to safety. Real improvement comes from mutual trust, system thinking, and leaders who respond to problems with curiosity–not blame. When we talk about…
TL;DR: GM said it believed in long-term thinking. NUMMI actually practiced it. A 1987 GM executive summary admitted that short-term financial pressure drove decisions at GM far more than at NUMMI. The difference wasn’t philosophy — it was system design.…
TL;DR: NUMMI’s success was not driven by Lean tools alone, but by leadership behaviors that treated people as partners in quality and improvement. When you open the NUMMI Management Practices: Executive Summary–that thin, yellow-covered 1987 report preserved in the Don…
In 1981, Ford Motor Company and UAW leaders traveled to Japan to study Toyota, Nissan, and Mazda — and they came home with very different conclusions about what they had seen. Another in this series drawn from the Don Ephlin…
Fear Drives Compliance — Respect Builds Pride, Learning, and Improvement TL;DR: Don Ephlin once wrote, “You can’t punish your way to pride.” That insight still resonates today. Fear might create short-term compliance, but respect creates long-term learning. Here’s what Ephlin,…
