Listen: In Season 2, Episode 2, Mark Graban and Jamie Flinchbaugh begin with Mark sharing about his Australia and New Zealand workshop tour with the Association for Manufacturing Excellence. Even koalas find their way into the conversation. We then shift…
TL;DR: Boeing’s 737 MAX failures weren’t caused by frontline workers–they were the predictable result of leadership choices that prioritized schedule over safety and ignored core Lean principles. Lean failed at Boeing because executives waved it off, not because the ideas…
Jim Womack returns to the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast to reflect on how Lean thinking has evolved–and where it has gone off track. Drawing on decades of firsthand experience, he shares candid perspectives on leadership, daily management, and why tools…
2024 Preface: I’m re-posting this blog post from 2012 about Lean at Boeing. The WSJ headline emphasizes “speed up,” but that could be the fault of their editors not realizing that Lean means quality and flow go hand in hand.…
TL;DR: Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun wants to close the company’s “shadow factories” – the rework operations where planes get repaired, upgraded, and checked before final delivery. The phrase echoes the older Lean idea of the “hidden factory.” Closing it is…
tl;dr: The Boeing 737 MAX incident wasn’t caused by careless workers. It was the predictable result of weak systems, rushed production, poor mistake-proofing, and a culture that discourages speaking up. Blaming individuals prevents learning; fixing systems prevents recurrence. As we…
What do Boeing frontline mechanics and engineers think about this day? What did they expect going into it? How did the day turn out? I’d love to know. “Quality is made in the boardroom.” W. Edwards Deming I rolled my…
Listen: In Episode 44 of the Lean Whiskey podcast, Jamie Flinchbaugh and Mark Graban get back together for this first episode of 2024. Since we’re not doing Dry January, we go right into the whiskey first by talking about old…
Update: I’ve written a longer piece about inspection that’s now at the bottom of this post. I’m frustrated that the official Boeing response to their high-profile quality problems (and safety risks) is more… INSPECTIONS! Boeing will inspect Boeing’s work more.…
Jamie Flinchbaugh and I got a great response to the first episode of our new “Lean Whiskey” podcast. We’ve had a great time with this, and I’m happy that anybody is willing to listen :-) We’ve done our second episode,…
TL;DR: When leaders prioritize speed and output over quality, employees stop speaking up–and safety suffers. From GM to Boeing to hospitals, production pressure creates fear, hidden defects, and misleading public narratives that no amount of PR can fix. Yesterday’s blog…
Podcaster Cali Lewis (a fellow DFW-area Texan) hosts a show called GeekBeat.tv, where she normally highlights new consumer tech gadgets and nerdy robots from MIT. Her most recent video features video from her visit to Boeing and their 737 assembly…
