All posts from Mark Graban’s LeanBlog.org, including podcasts, announcements, articles, and more.
In 2007, I wrote about a BBC article that included a number I’ve never quite been able to shake. Workers at Toyota’s Georgetown, Kentucky plant were pulling the andon cord – the mechanism that lets any worker stop the line…
I haven’t said much about this here yet, so consider this the announcement. I’m writing a new book. It’s a practical guide for Lean leaders, continuous improvement professionals, and anyone who’s ever wondered why their problem-solving training didn’t produce more…
You know the feeling in the conference room when the team finally lands it. The fishbone is covered in sticky notes. You’ve worked through five whys, or ten, or fifteen. Somebody on the team traces the line with a finger…
A Florida surgeon, Thomas Shaknovsky, was indicted on a second-degree manslaughter charge on April 13. The charge followed the death of William Bryan, a 70-year-old Alabama man, during what was supposed to be a laparoscopic splenectomy in August 2024. Instead…
At the 2024 KaiNexicon (the KaiNexus user conference), I gave a talk called “Warning: Signs! From Cautionary Commands to Proactive Prevention” — a tour through the world of warning signs, why they don’t work very well, and what we can…
Thanks, as always, to Ryan McCormack for this. He always shares so much good reading, listening, and viewing here! Subscribe to get these directly from Ryan via email. News, articles, books, podcasts, and videos about how to make the workplace…
TL;DR: The eight wastes give you a lens for seeing problems — but Lean isn’t a scavenger hunt for waste. The real work is understanding why waste exists and building systems where people feel safe enough to point it out.…
I get this question a lot. Some version of it comes up at nearly every conference Q&A, in coaching calls, and in emails from CI practitioners. Sometimes it’s about an executive who blames people whenever something goes wrong. Sometimes it’s…
I watched the HBO documentary “Fukushima: A Nuclear Nightmare” the other day. It’s chilling. The film gives a detailed account of the nine days after the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami, focusing on the workers who risked their lives to…
There’s a moment every experienced leader knows. Someone brings you a problem, and you can see the answer before they finish the sentence. You’ve been in this situation before. You know what to do. And so you tell them. It…
Here’s the most famous example of root cause analysis in the Lean world, from Taiichi Ohno’s book on the Toyota Production System. You’ve seen it in training decks, conference talks, blog posts. I’ve shared it myself plenty of times. See…
Follow this workflow with me for a second: An employee uses AI to write a summary of their accomplishments. Their manager uses AI to evaluate that summary and generate an annual review. The employee reads the AI-generated review, nods thoughtfully,…
