5S Week on the Lean Blog
Jamie’s Earlier 5S Column In honor of our new Sponsor, The 5S Store, this is “5S Week” on the Lean Blog. We’ll feature commentary from our bloggers on 5S and invite you to share your 5S success stories (or frustrations).…
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All Blog Posts
All posts from Mark Graban’s LeanBlog.org, including podcasts, announcements, articles, and more.
GM Goes Big with Inventory
WSJ: At GM, Curbing Inventories Calls For Juggling Act From the article: At the end of December, GM had more than one million vehicles in stock in the U.S. That’s equivalent to about 41,000 vehicles for every point of its…
LeanBlog Podcast #15 — Interview with Jim Huntzinger on “Training Within Industry”
LeanBlog Podcast #15 is a new discussion with a previous Podcast guest, Jim Huntzinger. Last time, we talked about the Lean Accounting Summit. This time, we’re talking about the renaissance of the “Training Within Industry” program. We’ll talk about the…
Nice Mention of Some Lean Blogs
PI – Process Improvement, Quarterly Update – Fall 2006 Above is a nice mention of the Lean Blog and some of the other lean-related blogs that I love to follow: Gemba Panta Rei – Jon Miller has been very supportive…
Lean Student Paper Contest – Win $$$
By Jamie Flinchbaugh OK, maybe not $$$, but you can win $500. As some of you may know, I am passionate about education. Here’s a post I did on lean in education, but most of my dollars and energy goes…
Respect in Retail Roundup (Wal-Mart and Home Despot)
Forbes Article on Wal-Mart Here is a decidedly pro-Wal-Mart article (“the fair and balanced Lean Blog”) in a follow up to this post about Wal-Mart’s new employee scheduling practices. Forbes points out that Lowes and Target also use this type…
Lean Challenge Response: Bill Hanover
Here is a response to the Lean Challenge contest entry (click here to read the situation submitted by Rich, a blog reader). Click on the “Contest” link at the bottom of this post to see more responses. If you have…
The Excitement of Starting with Lean
One thing I love about doing consulting work is that you get to see people go through the early excitement of learning about lean for the first time. Seeing the proverbial light bulbs going off is energizing, to say the…
Signs are Not Error Proofing: Electrical Circuit Breaker Edition
I saw this at a hospital lab last year, a great example of true error proofing vs. just putting up warning signs. “Cautions” and “Warnings” are lazy engineering, in general, with product design. Signs are not good problem-solving in any…
Is Wal-Mart’s Algorithmic Scheduling Lean — or Disrespectful to People?
TL;DR: Matching staffing to customer demand can make sense from a Lean perspective — but when scheduling systems create unpredictable hours and treat workers as variable costs, they undermine respect for people and ultimately harm both employees and customers. Wal-Mart…
Lean Challenge Response: David Meier
Here is a response to the Lean Challenge contest entry (click here to read the situation submitted by Rich, a blog reader). Click on the “Contest” link at the bottom of this post to see more responses. If you have…
Bad Boss Roundup
A few articles in the news today about bad bosses. Hopefully, more than a few have 2007 resolutions to get better. Chances are though, the bad bosses think they are great. If your boss has resolutions for becoming a better…
