Paul Akers, the President of FastCap is a great advocate for staff-driven kaizen (or improvement) ideas in the workplace. Paul and his company bring many people through his company so they can see their fun culture of continuous improvement (as…
If you are in the midst of a Lean transformation and have some time, please take a look at this online survey from a doctoral student who contacted me. Her introductory comments: Please allow me to introduce myself. My name…
As you might have heard, considering all of the Super Bowl media hype from here in North Texas, our weather has been pretty bad. Between different ice storms, we’ve been “snowed in” four separate days in the last two weeks,…
Dan Pink joins me to discuss his book Drive and the science behind what actually motivates people — ideas deeply aligned with Lean thinking and Deming. We explore why “if-then” rewards backfire for complex work, the dysfunctions of incentive schemes…
It’s time for a Lean Blog feature I haven’t done in a while…. “A Lean Guy Reads _______”. I’ve done this before with the WSJ, Fortune, and USA Today (click here for past editions). This time, it’s Tuesday’s USA Today…
Our guest today for Episode #75 is Peter T. Ward, a professor at Ohio State University’s Fisher College Business and Chair of the Department of Management Sciences. Professor Ward is a leading expert in lean management and is president of…
This year, the Lean Enterprise Institute is helping the MIT Lean Advancement Initiative’s “EdNet” jointly host their annual conference. It’s May 28-30 at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis — for more information, click here –> www.lean.org It’s LEI and…
Clemson students learn by building a better clock The article I’ve linked to above describes a hands-on simulation being run for Lean students at Clemson University. This is great, since it’s hard to understand Lean principles from just reading books.…
Just a quick blog post for today… I recently did an online presentation for a student Lean club at Utah State University. It wasn’t as nice as actually being there, but with the webcam connection, I could at least the…
Baylor Rewards Freshmen Who Retake SAT – NYTimes.com Baylor Newspaper Article Show me a ranking system and I’ll show you a way to “game the system” to manipulate the apparent results. You see this with sales quotas, annual bonus plans,…
Amazon.com: Everything I Know About Lean I Learned in First Grade: Robert O. Martichenko: Books This is a unique and compelling book about the Lean methodology. It’s written from the perspective of the author visiting his daughter’s 1st grade class…
Pay for Grades? – Springfield, IL – The State Journal-Register Flying in and out of Chicago, I’ve been reading over the past few months about the Chicago Public Schools paying high school freshman and sophomores for their grades: “…some Chicago…
