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…
TL;DR: Matching staffing to customer demand can make sense from a Lean perspective — but when scheduling systems create unpredictable hours and treat workers as variable costs, they undermine respect for people and ultimately harm both employees and customers. Wal-Mart…
LeanBlog Podcast Episode #9 is a discussion with David Mann, the author of the excellent book Creating A Lean Culture: Tools To Sustain Lean Conversions. In this episode, we will talk about Steelcase’s experience with their lean efforts and the…
My guest for episode three of the Lean Blog Podcast is Dr. Jeffrey Liker, professor of Industrial and Operations Engineering at the University of Michigan and author of The Toyota Way. Liker has spent decades studying how Toyota actually works,…
TL;DR: In Part 2 of this interview, the late Norman Bodek explains why Lean fails when leaders cling to control. Drawing on Toyota examples and “Quick & Easy Kaizen,” he argues that long-term success comes from developing people, trusting teams,…
