Happy New Year! It’s a time of year when we think about improvement and goals for the year. We do this in our organizations and we do so on a personal level. Today’s blog post is a transcript of a…
This Thursday, we'll be hosting a webinar presented by a former Toyota engineer, Jess Orr. She will be sharing lessons learned at Toyota about the A3 problem-solving methodology, referred to there as "Toyota Business Practices." In particular, Jess will be sharing a case study about using the A3 approach to improving communication.
I bet the company that services my pool was surprised that I had a checklist-related process improvement suggestion for them after a mistake was made instead of being angry and wanting somebody punished or talked to...
It’s almost Thanksgiving here in the United States, so I’ll be taking the rest of the week off from the blog to enjoy some downtime with family. Improving operations, usually through Lean, was my main job in different manufacturing companies…
Ah, whiskey. I like whiskey. I’m not afraid to say that. I’ve blogged about whiskey (or whisky) once before: Why Kaizen is an Important Differentiator for Japanese Whisky. I also have a personal Kaizen story that I need to write about...
Gwendolyn Galsworth is a leading thinker and author on Lean and various aspects of "visuality." One thing she talks about in the workplace is "information deficits."
I’m a big nerd in that I love reading newspapers basically cover to cover. I’m a nerd in many ways, I guess. You don’t have to be a survey nerd to take my short reader survey (and you might win…
I hope y’all had a nice Memorial Day weekend here in the U.S. It’s a global audience for the blog, but I had the take the day off from Lean (other than this post for the holiday). I spent a…
One of the key aspects of the Kaizen process is that we SHARE completed improvements with others. That’s a key principle that Joe Swartz and I wrote about in Healthcare Kaizen, and it’s a key aspect of the KaiNexus software platform.…
Last week was the annual LEI Lean Transformation Summit (see my notes here). There were many inspiring stories, but are always reminders that it’s not always a Lean world around us. Tom Ehrenfeld (who blogged about the two days of…
Mark’s Note: Today’s guest post is from a colleague I have worked with before on a hospital project. Bernita and I worked together at a children’s hospital, as she wrote about here on the HKS blog. Bernita’s post is modified…
There’s a fun post on Lifehacker with photos of (and links to details on) ten clever household “hacks.” In the “kaizen” mindset, there’s a great value placed on using “creativity over capital” or “putting your mind before your wallet.” There’s…