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All posts from Mark Graban’s LeanBlog.org, including podcasts, announcements, articles, and more.

Paperless Boardroom at Toyota

Article Link I found this story today about the newly developed ‘Paperless’ Boardroom at Toyota. By utilizing and combining IT technologies a boardroom was created that allows for a variety of electronic data management functions. The article purports that this…

Get Your Payback From Lean!

Leading Lean: Get Your Payback From Lean! Here’s the latest column from Jamie Flinchbaugh, focused on leadership’s responsibility to create opportunities for successful factories. If you’re freeing up resources, equipment or people, it’s the responsibility of top management to find…

Jim Womack’s Latest Letter and a Q&A

This week, Jim Womack sent out his latest email newsletter, entitled “A Tale of Two Business Systems.” The Lean Enterprise Institute has offered up some of Jim’s time to answer a few selected questions about that letter or his recent…

Analysis of Ford Buyouts

Here is a current blog post (11/30/06) for those of you looking to read about the accepted Ford buyouts. Detroit News Article Link (from Feb) From a friend….. Here’s a creative, preemptive move most certainly designed to head off the…

How much complexity is too much?

The Wharton School of Business publishes internet articles and editorial content bi-weekly covering a wide range of business topics and research. You can sign up for free at The latest edition included a special feature focused on complexity. I…

Adding Value Vs. Removing Cost

Article Link Yesterday an article titled “Learning from Toyota – Again” by John Teresko was published on IndustryWeek.com. The focus of Teresko’s article is centered around 2 key questions: How does Toyota keep getting better? What keeps competitors from emulating…

Rebuilding US Manufacturing

IndustryWeek Series Link Those of you who followed the link to, “Learning from Toyota – Again” from my Adding Value Vs. Reducing Cost post will likely have also seen that this article is the first installment of a year long…

Should Your COO Learn Japanese?

By Bill Waddell (Note from Mark Edmondson: Here’s a recent article written by LEAN Affiliate Bill Waddell that I think many of you will find interesting.) The terms “Lean Manufacturing” and “Japanese” are hardly synonymous. This may come as a…

Sunday’s Demand Spike for Pizza

WSJ.com – Pizza-Delivery Teams Are Training Hard For Sunday’s Game ($$$) I started reading this with great interest, expecting to read about the operations side of a pizza delivery business. It also made me think back to the folks at…