Not Neatness for Neatness Sake
MSN Careers – Is a Messier Desk Better? I was going to blog about this book before and Dan Markovitz had beaten me to it. But, Matt, a Lean Blog reader, sent me this new article on the same topic…
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Clarifying Lean vs. Frugal
By Dan Markovitz There’s been some confusion over my recent post criticizing the Business Week article on Toyota’s “frugality.” I do not believe that Toyota is frugal (read: “cheap”). Rather, I believe that the company is simply focused on value.…
More Notes on the Business Week Article
Toyota: A Carmaker Wired to Win: Dan Markovitz beat me to the punch, but I also wanted to comment on some things in the article: The article says: “Visit any Toyota plant in Japan, and it’s easy to grin at…
Lean Is Not "Frugal." Lean Is "Value."
By Dan Markovitz BusinessWeek online joined the rest of the media in noting that Toyota just passed GM as the global leader in auto sales this quarter. The article covers all the usual points, and to its credit, does add…
What Will You Do Differently Today?
By Dan MarkovitzBack in October, Lifehacker ran a lengthy article on “personal kaizen.” The thrust of the piece is how we can improve our lives by adopting the kaizen approach of the TPS and applying it to our own work…
Newsflash! Respecting workers = better results!
By Dan Markovitz Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal ran an article explaining that employees are more likely to embrace changes when they’re fully informed of the rationale behind those changes. What?!?!?!? You mean that performance relates to worker involvement?!?!? Shocking!!! Foremost…
Error Proofing Your Meetings
By Dan Markovitz Sometimes it’s hard to spot errors in an office, much less error-proof the workspace. With so many value streams running through each knowledge worker, and so much of the value being intangible and invisible, error-proofing is tricky.…
"I Canna Get Warp Drive Back In Less Than Two Days, Captain!"
By Dan Markovitz: (Mark’s note: I saw this article and instantly thought of Dan, re: Lean in an office environment. The dynamics in this article reminded me of the typical dynamics in a non-Lean factory, where lots of expediting takes…
The 5S Workplace: Cause or Effect?
By Dan Markovitz, Time Back Management: A response to an earlier post… Is messiness really beneficial? I think the authors of A Perfect Mess make a silly distinction. On the one hand, you have order for order’s sake. The authors…
How Do You Say "Lean" in Swedish?
By Dan Markovitz, Markovitz Consulting: The McKinsey Quarterly just published an interview with Peter Gossas, the president of Stockholm-based Sandvik Materials Technology, a leading producer of advanced alloys and ceramic materials. When he was appointed president in 2003, the company…
Mulally’s Early Lean Leadership at Ford
By Dan Markovitz, Markovitz Consulting(Mark’s note… Dan has been a unofficial, yet very welcome, contributor to the blog for a few weeks now. We should see him posting directly soon. But for now, here is a post he sent me…
Why Quota for Nurses Isn’t Cure-All
WSJ Article ($) | Free Version of Article Thanks to Dan Markovitz for pointing this article out to me a few days ago: At IHI’s patient-safety conference today in Orlando, Fla., Ms. Rutherford is presenting an alternative to ratios: a…