This is an article that I originally published on LinkedIn back in 2014. It was also picked up and re-published by Entrepeneur.com. Other than this silly video that I created, this article is probably the second most-read piece of content…
tl;dr: Toyota’s Takaoka #2 line shows how flexibility and Kaizen go hand-in-hand. With rapid, low-cost changeovers, worker-driven improvements, and a focus on customer needs, the line adapts to demand without sacrificing quality–a reminder that agility is built into the culture,…
Today, I'll be touring the Toyota truck plant in San Antonio again, the plant known as TMMTX. I'm there with our "Symposium on Learning Organizations" group, all 40 of us. In this post, I share some pre-tour goals and share some links to previous Toyota plant visits (in Texas and Japan).
While I'm writing here about Northwestern men's basketball learning from Duke (without copying everything), the same ideas apply if you're Ford learning from Toyota or a hospital learning from ThedaCare.
I continue sharing documents from the Don Ephlin library archive. What did Ford and the UAW learn when they visited Japan in 1981? Many of the things that made Japanese industry successful are the same things that make organizations successful with Lean today, including in healthcare.
In the midst of the discussion about the NEJM article, John Shook of LEI (a former Toyota employee) pointed me to this 1993 HBR article: "Time-and-Motion Regained" I believe it's freely available...
The phrase “Lean journey” is used widely to describe an organization’s transformation over time. It’s either a phrase that invokes helpful imagery or it’s a horrible cliché. I was speaking at a Lean event last week and I kept hearing…
Today’s post is something that I wrote for a broader LinkedIn audience, but might have meaning and significance to my Lean readers: “What Bad Managers, Good Managers, and Great Managers Do“ You can also read this on Medium.com. You might…
tl;dr: Lean is not just about speed or efficiency. Lean, properly understood, improves flow and quality at the same time–along with safety, cost, and morale. The idea that Lean “makes bad stuff faster” is a persistent Lean Six Sigma myth…
John Krafcik coined “lean production” in 1988, describing practices studied by MIT’s International Motor Vehicle Program. The name was new; the practices had developed earlier at Toyota. The Lean Enterprise Institute’s definition and history makes that distinction clear. I first…
Bob Lutz spent 47 years in the auto industry at GM, Ford, BMW, and Chrysler, and in this 2011 conversation he talks about his book Car Guys vs. Bean Counters, the “blanderizer” effect on product design, and why he thinks…
On Friday, there was yet another Wall Street Journal article about Lean (fixating as they always do on the “Just In Time” component). The article titled “For Lean Factories, No Buffer” yet again takes an outdated 1980s view that Lean…
