Amateurs Do It Right….
I like this quote from, of all companies, General Motors — a GMC Truck ad: “Amateurs work until they get it right. Professionals work until they can’t get it wrong.” The ad shows images of football, but it makes me…
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All posts from Mark Graban’s LeanBlog.org, including podcasts, announcements, articles, and more.
"Lean and mean manufacturing"
Lean and mean manufacturing – 9/26/2006 – Modern Materials Handling When I see “mean” in a headline, it’s strange… I would expect that to be negative article, but this article is positive and pretty accurate. “Most people think of lean…
Lean is the Norm??
Including the Missing Links in the Global Supply Chain – InformationWeek White Papers: Here’s one more reason to NOT pay attention to “lean” articles from software vendors. Don’t waste your time on the link above, but it includes the line:…
Great Kanban Story from David Meier
Here is a story from David Meier, a former Group Leader at Toyota and the co-author of The Toyota Way Fieldbook and the upcoming Toyota Talent (April 2007). He writes:I am sure you have experienced the problem of how to…
Lack of Error Proofing Kills 3 Babies
This is an incredibly sad, and completely preventable, situation. Three babies are dead, and three more injured, because the wrong drug was administered to them at an Indianapolis hospital. Let’s keep in mind, first, this quote from the World Health…
An Example of Incentives Harming Customers
Flight Attendants Extort Blanket Sales From Freezing Passengers – Consumerist In an earlier post’s comments, Luke pointed out the importance of having the RIGHT incentives. As Peter Sholtes writes, people are amazingly good at meeting objectives, at the expense of…
How Incentives Are Ineffective
Reward and Incentive Programs are Ineffective — Even Harmful by Peter R. Scholtes It’s worth a full post and full link, this article that John Hunter of the Curious Cat blog wrote about and mentioned in a comment to this…
People want to do Quality Work
A question to ask yourselves (if you’re in management): does your management system allow people to do their best work? Even if you’re “working on lean”, do you pressure people to put sub-standard product out the door? A number of…
Review – The Toyota Way Fieldbook
The Lean Library Here is a long overdue review of the book, The Toyota Way Fieldbook. I wrote the review following the format of The Lean Library and have also gotten the review published over there. The Fieldbook is an…
OK, So It’s Not the "Lean Travel" Blog
I know not everybody travels, so y’all might not be concerned about attempts to see lean (or NON lean) practices in the travel world. But, I travel almost weekly, so this is one “gemba” I see quite a bit. One…
Some Detailed NASA Standard Work
Spacewalkers complete work on space station The exact stat isn’t in the article I linked to above, but I saw in a magazine at the airport today, these details about the “commands” issued from Ground Control to the spacewalking NASA…
Leadership and Lean Manufacturing: A Conversation with Jamie Flinchbaugh – LeanBlog Podcast on the Role of Leadership in Driving Change and Improvement
Here is LeanBlog Podcast #6, the second part of my discussion with Jamie Flinchbaugh, co-author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Lean. You can find the first part of the podcast here. In this Podcast, we talk about how leadership needs…
