tl;dr: The andon cord isn’t a tool–it’s a trust signal. Toyota’s thousands of line stops reflect psychological safety and leadership support. Ford’s rare pulls reflected fear and mistrust. Lean succeeds or fails on culture, not mechanics. In 2007, a BBC…
Intel, Motion Develop Tablet PC for Nurses – WSJ.com More news stories via Google. Is this a “siren song” of technology for healthcare? Executives and managers in any industry, it seems, believe in the promise of technology as the solution…
Here is Episode #18 of the LeanBlog Podcast. My guest today is Eric Christiansen, the President of a translation services company, OmniLingua (more can be found here on their philosophy as a company, being a self-described “Deming Company.”) I was…
The ‘Toyota Way’ Is Translated for a New Generation of Foreign Managers – New York Times Here’s a very good article from the NY Times, a few days ago, that talks about Toyota’s relatively new process training worldwide managers in…
Business Week Article Here’s a good story about how some doctors offices are trying to reduce backlogs and appointment delays, by adopting lean and operations management methods. As the head of a large primary care department at a Kaiser Permanente…
By Luke Van Dongen: Name of Book: Lean Kaizen: A Simplified Approach to Process Improvements Authors: George Alukal & Anthony Manos Publication Date: 2006 Reviewed By: Luke Van Dongen, February 2007 Book description: what’s the key message? This book is…
Here is the actual ad that ran during the game, after seeing the preview here. If you’re reading this via RSS or a news reader, come visit the actual blog page to view the commercial video. So, the “joke”…
Deming listed the annual review process as one of the “deadly diseases” of management. From this website: “Evaluation of performance, annual review, merit rating. nourishes short-term performance annihilates long-term planning demolishes teamwork promotes competition builds fear promotes playing politics destroys…
For Some Manufacturers, There Are Benefits to Keeping Production at Home – WSJ.com This really is a recurring theme in the WSJ, this article starts: “It has long been an axiom that U.S.-made consumer goods such as TV sets and…
STLtoday – Business – Story Here is an overview and general awareness article from the St. Louis paper. It’s always nice to see lean (and lean healthcare) in the general media. The goal is to map out and retool processes…
Business Week: Out At Home Depot As more details about the former Home Depot “leader” and his “leadership” come out, it’s a sad case study of bad leadership (written about earlier, at risk of being accused of Shadenfreude). Why am…
Tom LaSorda Plebeian Prince (WSJ) Here is a new interview with Chrysler’s Tom LaSorda, a lean leader who has been featured often here on the Lean Blog (some earlier posts here). LaSorda is spending a lot of his time at…
