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…
OK, so I’ll admit I had a case of “rabbit ears” when I took the WSJ to task for calling the doomed BP Deepwater Horizon rig a “lean” operation. They were using the colloquial everyday use of “lean,” a term…
While I was on vacation, the news (the BBC World Service, mainly) focused quite a lot on the BP oil spill in the gulf, including the world’s reactions to the problem. While it seems a bit uncouth to criticize our…
Mark’s note: Today’s post is from a regular guest blogger and a friend of mine, Dan Markovitz – his regular blog can be found at his ‘Markovitz Consulting site. I saw Dan again a few weeks back at the Lean…
At last week’s Shingo Prize conference, I was very excited to meet Dr. Stephen Covey (my podcast is here), but I was just as excited, if not more so, to meet Dr. Brent James, the noted healthcare quality expert from…
Due out in June is a book that I think will be an important one for the Lean Healthcare movement. That book is about the Lean journey of the Wisconsin health system ThedaCare. It’s called On the Mend: Transforming Healthcare…
If you’ve searched for “Lean methodology,” you’ve probably seen definitions about waste reduction or efficiency. That’s part of it — but Lean is much more than that. It’s a leadership system for building better organizations. I’ve been studying and practicing…
What is your role at work? Your purpose? Those questions might make you really stop and think. I sat in yesterday on a class, taught by an ex-Toyota leader, that raised a number of thought-provoking questions about Lean and the…
For a number of reasons, I’ve decided to re-read my copy of one of the most influential books I’ve ever read: Out of the Crisis by the late, great Dr. W. Edwards Deming. In the light of Toyota’s recent quality…
As I’m traveling back from Sweden today, I think I’ll be catching up on the web reaction to Toyota’s major quality problems and recalls. I am not a Toyota insider and I don’t claim to know what happened or what…
Language that undermines Lean, respect for people, and real improvement TL;DR: The words Lean leaders use matter–some common phrases quietly reinforce command-and-control thinking, fear, and misunderstanding rather than learning and improvement. If Lean is truly about respect for people and…
I love NBC’s “The Office” and this clip of Dunder Mifflin’s Dwight Schrute asking a question at the company shareholder’s meeting is pretty funny: Dwight is talking about efficiency of the huge line of angry shareholders. He completely loses the…