All posts from Mark Graban’s LeanBlog.org, including podcasts, announcements, articles, and more.
Financial News – Yahoo! Finance So is the Shingo Prize more indicative of book quality than it is for lean company performance? Either way, congrats to Jim Womack, Dan Jones, Freddy Balle, and Michael Balle for their Shingo winning books.…
I’ve always wondered how you would do investing in Shingo Prize-winning companies. There is quite a bit of debate in the lean blog world about the Shingo committee continuously awarding plant-level lean achievement prizes to bankrupt companies, namely Delphi. I’m…
Inside Bay Area – IBA – Alameda Times-Star – Home Here’s a pretty glowing article about how NUMMI, the Toyota/GM joint venture plant in Fremont CA, focuses on employee health and safety. When I visited NUMMI last year, one of…
I’ve decided to write today about some personal frustration that I am experiencing as part of my daily work. My discontent stems from a form of waste that I have thus far been unsuccessful in helping others to see, yet…
I received a question from a PhD student in Indiana, he asked if I could post it here. If you have any ideas or responses for him, please use the “comments” feature of the blog. “I’ve redesigned organizational charts for…
Northwest Indiana News: nwitimes.com Here’s a nice article about some community lean training in Indiana. South Suburban College and the Chicago Manufacturing Center created a Lean Academy to teach this manufacturing philosophy to businesses and individuals wanting to increase productivity…
A friend sent me this article from CNN Money. It’s not often that you see a mainstream article that provides data to refute the idea that outsourcing is THE way to reduce costs. The article mostly deals with outsourcing customer…
The Power of Purpose It seems that someone is always rediscovering Deming. I gave a lean overview talk to a healthcare audience recently. I was asked afterward by an attendee, “Why didn’t you mention Deming?” Deming certainly played a major…
Yesterday The Detroit Free Press published a collection of comments from auto industry analysts and GM leaders in a piece titled “5 Ways to Fix GM“ We’ve put a lot on the blog in recent months about the woes of…
Rough Type: Nicholas Carr’s Blog: SAP’s truth-stretching ads So another ad has made me cranky. SAP is running an ad that claims: The right software can make any size company more efficient, more agile, more responsive. In short, make your…
There is a TV ad that runs very often on Fox News, CNN, et. al. for UPS. This ad tries to make the argument that UPS can be a competitive advantage. They compare two companies: “You have overseas suppliers, they…
TipTop Apartments – Former Ford Plant I was in Omaha, Nebraska yesterday and saw what looked like an old Ford factory near the airport. It had an old water tank on the top with a weathered Ford logo. The plant…
