tl;dr: The Boeing 737 MAX incident wasn’t caused by careless workers. It was the predictable result of weak systems, rushed production, poor mistake-proofing, and a culture that discourages speaking up. Blaming individuals prevents learning; fixing systems prevents recurrence. As we…
Thanks, everybody, for reading my blog here in 2023. And for listening to podcasts… oh so many podcasts. This blog post is the “year end” report with the most read posts of the second half of the year. On one…
Thanks, everybody, for reading my blog here in 2023. And for listening to podcasts… oh so many podcasts. I released 13 “Lean Blog Interviews” podcasts. This month marks the 17th birthday of my podcast, which started with this Norman Bodek…
TODAY marks the 17th birthday (or is it an anniversary?) of my Lean Blog Interviews podcast (known in the early days as the LeanBlog Podcast). It’s an awkward name and part of me wishes I had chosen something with more…
TL;DR: Masaaki Imai (1930-2023) was the Japanese consultant who, more than any single person, brought the word “kaizen” — and the practice of continuous improvement — to the global business community. His 1986 book Kaizen: The Key to Japan’s Competitive…
Scroll down for how to subscribe, transcript, and more Joining us for Episode #474 of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast is Norbert Majerus. He has his own firm now but previously worked for Goodyear, joining the company in 1978 in…
I am saddened to hear of the death of Ritsuo Shingo (1947-2023), as announced by the Shingo Institute. He was the son of Shigeo Shingo, for whom the Shingo Prize and Shingo Institute were named. I want to express my…
Scroll down for how to subscribe, transcript, and more My guest for Episode #451 of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast is Dr. Alan G. Robinson. He specializes in managing ideas, building high-performance organizations, creativity, innovation, quality, and lean production. He is the…
Scroll down for how to subscribe, transcript, and more My guests for Episode #430 of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast are Eric Ethington and Matt Zayko, the authors of the new book The Power of Process: The Story of Innovative Lean Process…
Scroll down for how to subscribe, transcript, and more We’ve been on hiatus over the summer here, so I’ve taken a look back at some of the older episodes from the podcast archives, while being on a bit of a…
Scroll down for how to subscribe, transcript, and more During our summer hiatus from releasing new podcast episodes, we’re looking back at previous episodes of the podcast. Today, sadly, we’re taking a look back at guests from the past 15…
TL;DR: Shohei Ohtani’s extraordinary success as a two-way MLB star reflects more than talent–it’s a real-world example of the Harada Method, a goal-setting and self-reliance approach championed by the late Norman Bodek. This post revisits Ohtani’s story through a Lean…
