By Jamie Flinchbaugh One of the most underrated voices in the “lean” world is Tom Johnson. I still regularly recommend his latest book, now 6 years old, Profit Beyond Measure. It’s a little hard for some to read, but the…
by Jamie Flinchbaugh I’m not sure if this has much to do with lean, other than to say that business leaders are needed to make lean work. My friend Randy Pinkett who last year won Donald Trump’s The Apprentice has…
In my Assembly Magazine monthly column Leading Lean, I chose to address in December one of my favorite topics, PDCA or Plan-Do-Check-Act. This is the practice of learning through improvement. I hope I did it justice, at least as much…
Recently I was giving a speech and had to follow Phil Gordon, famous poker pro and host of Celebrity Poker Showdown. Needless to say, he’s a tough act to follow with stories of massive pots, wealthy businessmen who lose millions…
The Society of Manufacturing Engineers is offering a special holiday sale on their best-seller for 2006, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Lean: Lessons from the Road. The price on Amazon is $30, but SME is selling it for $25.50 for regular…
The cover story this week in Business Week is called Smashing the Clock. It is the story of Best Buy’s removal of all expectations of when and where you work. The only thing that matters are the results. I’m not…
Dr. Monica Tracey of Oakland University’s Pawley Institute and I have published another article on our original research on lean and HR. This one is published in World of Work Journal and a link can be found here for a…
There is a new book on TQM available. I have not bought the book yet but my assumption is that it builds on TQM. To me, the link between TQM and lean is pretty clear. I would suggest that lean…
Another month has rolled by whch means Assembly Magazine has released another excellent issue of their magazine, of which I am very pleased to contribute. This month, in my Leading Lean column, I tackle the issue of “convincing” those around…
There is a topic that I have found myself talking about more and more lately. Perhaps the reason is that many of my speeches and seminars recently have focused on the lean STRATEGY. I don’t mean how lean affects your…
First, if you’ve read The Hitchhiker ‘s Guide to Lean, you will know that we believe the entire concept of deeply understanding our current state is a vital skill and principle to drive performance improvement. I recently penned an article…
I have something else to add to my earlier post on the state of lean through the eyes of an Industry Week survey. My point is this: we don’t know what to call this stuff, and at the same time,…
