Inspired by an article in Workforce Performance Solutions Journal Oct 2005 and personal experience. Waves of downsizing, employer demands, job disenchantment and technologies that keep employees plugged into their jobs both day and night have taken their toll. If recent…
When I worked at the GM Powertrain Livonia Engine Plant in the mid-1990s, the hallway display cases held posters celebrating something called “The Livonia Philosophy.” It read, in part, like this: “through trust, communication, and respect for the individual, we…
I’m pleased to present the latest in my Lean Thinker Q&A series, this time with Jamie Flinchbaugh, co-author of the recently-published book “The Hitchhiker’s Guide To Lean.” I’ve known Jamie for many years and have always found him to be…
No, this isn’t a 5S discussion. Every once in a while, I peek at the blog servers stats to see what people search for (on Google, for example) before getting here to the blog. This is just a sample that…
By Bill Waddell (Note from Mark Edmondson: Here’s a recent article written by LEAN Affiliate Bill Waddell that I think many of you will find interesting.) The terms “Lean Manufacturing” and “Japanese” are hardly synonymous. This may come as a…
No, I don’t buy baby food, but happened to stumble down this aisle at the local grocery store. This picture reminds me of Taiichi Ohno being inspired by the ready availability of goods at an American supermarket and that being…
Autofieldguide.com Here is a very long article (set of articles, really) on Toyota and TPS. It includes thoughts from Taiichi Ohno, Fujio Cho, and Gary Convis. I had previously heard that the phrase “Toyota Production System” itself wasn’t created until…
In July 2006, I pressed record on a conversation with Norm Bodek. The audio quality was poor. I had no idea what I was doing. Norman, who had spent decades going to Japan and had published Ohno and Shingo in…
TODAY marks the 17th birthday (or is it an anniversary?) of my Lean Blog Interviews podcast (known in the early days as the LeanBlog Podcast). It’s an awkward name and part of me wishes I had chosen something with more…
People often say Lean is pretty simple (or that it’s just “common sense“). Yeah, some of the concepts are simple… but sometimes deceptively so. Or, we find that it’s easier to describe Lean (as a management system, a set of…
I didn’t know , until yesterday, that Toyota has an official company blog (at least for Toyota UK). Even though I’ve learned from Toyota people and many books and classes (and I’ve written books of my own), I always encourage…
After their recent recorded conversation, it was great to see John Shook, CEO of LEI, and Eric Ries, Author of The Lean Startup together on stage at Day 2 of The Lean Startup Conference in SF. Some in the software-dominated…