BusinessWeek wrote about Segway, the wonderfully inventive two-wheel transportation device that was supposed to revolutionize how cities are built. Of course, I don’t know anyone who is currently building a new city from the ground up, but that’s a different…
As posted by LeanBlog.org founder Mark Graban, there is a new website available that focuses on helping individuals who want to guide their own self-learning, called The Lean Library. It includes a comprehensive list of lean books, book reviews, links…
When people talk about labor, they often focus on unions, disengaged employees and high wages. But there is a much bigger problem facing manufacturers today – a real skills shortage. Industry Week focused on this topic in a special report…
Mike Rother, an excellent guy and also the guy that brought us all value stream mapping through the book Learning to See, has just written a reflection on pitfalls of value stream mapping for SME’s Lean Directions newsletter. Here are…
Onshoring may not be the counter-argument to offshoring, particularly since most of the cases are just KEEPING work in the US when it could have moved overseas. That’s not really onshoring, it’s just preventing offshoring. This article from The Manufacturer…
Here’s some not-so-interesting news that I believe indicates not being focused on the customer and the subsequent focus on waste elimination. Harley-Davidson is changing their ticker symbol on Wall Street from HDI to HOG. Read the press release here. How…
Also from the August issue of Assembly Magazine is my latest column of Leading Lean. The topic this month is the key issue of observing. I believe the true ability to observe is a under appreciated topic in lean. Sure…
Here is an article from Assembly Magazine by Adam Cort about Boeing’s Dreamliner called Living the Dream. Boeing has been working on lean for a long, long time. For quite a while, there was little to show for it. But…
Although my book, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Lean: Lessons from the Road, is very much about lean, I particularly enjoy finding lessons on lean from books that having nothing to do with lean. I’ve already shared some lessons from two…
Few would argue that lean is about an journey to the ideal state, towards perfection. It’s a continuous, never ending journey. This is quite dated, but since it was before the blog, I’ve never written about it. I wrote a…
By Jamie Flinchbaugh Mark recently posted about Building Near Your Customers. Here’s another reason – your product might end up at the bottom of the sea. Check out what’s happened to 5,000 cars on their way to the Vancouver. I…
There are many books that are not at all about lean, but the lessons they contain are very helpful to a lean journey. Here’s one such example: The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell While this The New Yorker writer has…
