I’ve been fortunate to have the chance to visit an Autoliv factory in Utah – a great Lean company that makes air bags and protective devices for cars and passengers. I was really impressed with Autoliv, as were the healthcare…
I didn’t have a post yesterday because it was the Labor Day holiday here in the U.S. While I’m not a “worker,” in the sense of an hourly employee or union worker anymore, I still enjoyed the day off with…
I was driving the other day, listening to the 1980s music channel on XM Radio. The DJ announced a song by Duran Duran and it really sounded like “Juran Juran,” reminding me of the quality legend Joseph M. Juran. It…
I often get asked “what do you use to produce your podcasts?” So, while this might not be of interest to all, I thought I’d put it in a blog post that I could refer people to as a starting…
Hello from jolly old England. I’m in London for the Lean Healthcare Transformation Summit being put on today by Daniel T. Jones of the Lean Enterprise Academy. This post, strangely enough, has nothing to do with healthcare. But, I was…
I had my Lean goggles on at the airport last week and took two pictures of some Lean concepts in action. First off is a typical FedEx drop box. I’ve seen this before, but I love the simple visual control…
As with some (ok, many) of my complaints falls into the “nice to have these problems” category. That said, I had some avoidable waste and frustrations in the process of transitioning from my old dropped-too-many-times Blackberry to a new BlackBerry…
Podcast Episode #52 is a discussion with a good friend (and sometimes contributor) to the Lean Blog, Dan Markovitz, founder and President of Markovitz Consulting. Markovitz Consulting is a corporate efficiency-training firm specializing in the application of Lean manufacturing principles…
Listen: LeanBlog Podcast #36 once again features our friend and frequent guest, Norman Bodek, noted lean author, consultant, and President of PCS Press. In this episode, Norman talks about his most recent publication, a text by the legendary Shigeo Shingo,…
By Bryan Lund, guest contributor to the Lean Blog: I posted the following question on LinkedIn.com as Mark noted in a previous blog entry: “How important is the past in learning about how to handle the future? Specifically…I think that…
I’ll try to lighten things back up a bit. I may have written about this before, but as a frequently traveling consultant, the hotel room is my “gemba” many evenings, so it’s hard not to find waste. I actually gave…
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…