“I’ll Meet You at 2 AM….”
I keep seeing this ad on the local Dallas-area cable system, for Lewis Chevrolet in a small town, Canton TX. It’s a folksy car dealer ad, not shouting like most car ads. The ad features a guy who must be…
Category Blog
All Blog Posts
All posts from Mark Graban’s LeanBlog.org, including podcasts, announcements, articles, and more.
NPR Show Discusses The Future of U.S. Manufacturing
On Point : American Manufacturing and Jobs Here is a 45 minute audio program from National Public Radio, discussing the future of manufacturing, focusing on the question of “how are we going to have a rising standard of living in…
"The Customer Is God"
tompeters! This quote came from a frenetic Tom Peters slide deck (link above, see slide #14). “THE CUSTOMER IS GOD AND THE MARKET DECIDES EVERYTHING.” That sounds pretty much a lean philosophy to me. Make only what the customer wants,…
La-Z-Boy changing production lines to compete with China
Neosho Daily News Here is a nice story from Missouri about how La-Z-Boy is converting it’s plant (and others) from “batch and queue” to a lean, cellular production layout. Using lean to cut cycle times and costs is a great…
Lean Eyes on Customer Service
Evolving Excellence: Adventures in Customer Service I was already thinking of blogging on customer service adventures today when I saw the post by Kevin Meyers on his blog. His post is worth reading, as it illustrates how a lean process…
Gary Convis on Lean Leadership: Manage as if You Have No Power
Here is an outstanding profile of Gary Convis, the President of the Toyota Georgetown (KY) plant and the highest-ranking American executive in the company. I’ve written about Convis before and have seen him speak at a Lean conference. He really…
2006 Shingo Prize Winners
Reliable Plant Magazine The latest Shingo Prize winners have been announced. Congratulations to them all! And good luck to them all! I hope they realize that their lean journey isn’t over, it’s only just begun. Now some have taken issue,…
What Are We Searching For?
No, this isn’t a 5S discussion. Every once in a while, I peek at the blog servers stats to see what people search for (on Google, for example) before getting here to the blog. This is just a sample that…
Lean As A Business System
IndustryWeek : Continuous Improvement — Taking A Big-Picture Approach To Lean Here’s a good column from IW, comparing the enterprise lean approach of Newport News ship building with the “plant floor only” approach taken by GM and Ford. An excerpt:…
Why doesn’t this marker cap fit?
Bad Designs – Why doesn’t this marker cap fit? This is a fascinating website, full of examples of things that are designed poorly. Many of them are designed poorly because they don’t include error proofing as a core principle, such…
What Are Your Reasons?
Seth’s Blog: The Reason A great piece here on Seth Godin’s blog. He’s primarily a marketing guru, but I thought this was thought-provoking about why things “have always been this way.” It certainly applies in the lean world, we forget…
New Q&A With Jim Womack
Here is the latest exclusive Lean Manufacturing Blog Q&A With Jim Womack, author of Lean Solutions and founder of the Lean Enterprise Institute. We did an extended Q&A late last year, and here are some new responses to our questions…
