I personally believe that hoshin kanri is generally poorly understood and underrepresented in the lean world. To apply PDCA, the most fundamental improvement practice, to business planning and strategy, which is awfully darn important, seems like it couldn’t be a…
Quite some time ago, I wrote an article titled Getting Lean Right. I included a quote from someone which I did not have a reference for. I thought it was an important point to share, but I recently got an…
Throughout my travels, I continue to be frustrated with the lack of creative thinking that is going into lean transformation strategies. I was recently shared a story from within a company where a “leadership” award had been presented to a…
By Jamie Flinchbaugh OK, maybe not $$$, but you can win $500. As some of you may know, I am passionate about education. Here’s a post I did on lean in education, but most of my dollars and energy goes…
by Jamie Flinchbaugh I’m not sure if this has much to do with lean, other than to say that business leaders are needed to make lean work. My friend Randy Pinkett who last year won Donald Trump’s The Apprentice has…
In my Assembly Magazine monthly column Leading Lean, I chose to address in December one of my favorite topics, PDCA or Plan-Do-Check-Act. This is the practice of learning through improvement. I hope I did it justice, at least as much…
Recently I was giving a speech and had to follow Phil Gordon, famous poker pro and host of Celebrity Poker Showdown. Needless to say, he’s a tough act to follow with stories of massive pots, wealthy businessmen who lose millions…
The Society of Manufacturing Engineers is offering a special holiday sale on their best-seller for 2006, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Lean: Lessons from the Road. The price on Amazon is $30, but SME is selling it for $25.50 for regular…
The cover story this week in Business Week is called Smashing the Clock. It is the story of Best Buy’s removal of all expectations of when and where you work. The only thing that matters are the results. I’m not…
Dr. Monica Tracey of Oakland University’s Pawley Institute and I have published another article on our original research on lean and HR. This one is published in World of Work Journal and a link can be found here for a…
There’s a column with that title in the current issue of Business 2.0 magazine, the Nov 2006 issue. I’m re-posting this because the article is now online. The piece is about measuring the productivity of office or white collar professional…
Here is LeanBlog Podcast #10, again with Jamie Flinchbaugh, Founder of and Partner, co-author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Lean. In this Podcast, we respond to an audio question from blog listener Bruce from Akron OH. The topic is how to…