I’ve always been intrigued by entrepreneur (and billionaire) Elon Musk. He founded PayPal (which I have used for over ten years), founded SpaceX (which I would love to use, but can’t afford), and is the CEO of Tesla (not really…
TL;DR: Many “Lean Six Sigma” programs misrepresent Lean as a set of tools layered onto Six Sigma. Lean is not a toolbox–it’s a management system and culture rooted in flow, quality, and respect for people. When Lean is reduced to…
As the creator of the admittedly awkward L.A.M.E. acronym (meaning Lean As Mistakenly Explained or Lean As Misguidedly Executed), one burden is that I often get emails tipping me off to L.A.M.E. sightings. In a nutshell, it’s L.A.M.E. when a…
Episode #145 is a conversation with Natalie J. Sayer, co-author of the recently updated 2nd edition of the book Lean For Dummies. I was able to meet Natalie at the recent ASQ Lean and Six Sigma Conference, where she was…
Is LEAN an acronym? NO.
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 The article titled “For Lean Factories, No Buffer” yet again takes an outdated 1980s view that Lean…
I received a question from a reader, a retiree from a manufacturing company who is now a volunteer for a healthcare organization. We have exchanged messages before about opportunities to apply Lean thinking in a faith-based mission-driven organization like this,…
Here is attempt #3 in my experiment with a video “Week in Review” series. Please let me know what you think by adding comments to this post. Links mentioned in the video can be found beneath the video.
This blog post is about my first visit to TMMTX in 2010.
People often ask “So where did the term ‘lean’ come from?” It didn’t come from Toyota. And the term isn’t an acronym (so no need to type it as LEAN or L.E.A.N.). The term came from John Krafcik, who was…
Our guest for Episode #96 is Pascal Dennis of Lean Pathways, Inc. Pascal is a faculty member with the Lean Enterprise Institute and he’s the author of the books: Lean Production Simplified, Andy & Me: Crisis And Transformation On The…
