Tag: NUMMI

I did manage to buy a book that was published by NUMMI to celebrate their 10th anniversary. "10 Years of Quality & Teamwork" is the title. Here is the cover and I'll share a few things that caught my attention inside. It's interesting to think through this book in the context of : Tesla (the current owners of the building - see my past blog post) Healthcare organizations

I'm at the 8th annual Lean Healthcare Transformation Summit in Palm Springs, California. Follow on Twitter using the hashtag #HCSummit2017. If you're here at the event,...

While I'm writing here about Northwestern men's basketball learning from Duke (without copying everything), the same ideas apply if you're Ford learning from Toyota or a hospital learning from ThedaCare.

Here's Part 2 of a post about the original NUMMI Team Member Handbook from 1984 (see Part 1 here). This, and other documents I'll be...

I recently wrote about my exploration of the collected papers of the late Don Ephlin, a UAW senior leader and a professor of mine at...

TL;DR: Archival GM and NUMMI documents reveal how deeply Toyota embedded kaizen, problem-solving, and respect for people into daily work--principles that contrasted sharply with...

Today's episode #259 is Part 2 of a discussion I started with Steve Bera in episode #256. Steve was one of the original 16 "NUMMI...

I'm really excited to have Steve Bera as my guest for episode #256 of the podcast. I read about him as he was featured...

TL;DR: In the 1980s and '90s, GM spent roughly $90 billion trying to automate its way to competitiveness. Toyota took a different path--focusing on...

TL;DR: A re-aired episode of This American Life on NUMMI highlights enduring lessons about leadership, learning, and Lean. While critics like Labor Notes frame...

Editor's note (2026): In an era of AI, dashboards, and real-time data, Spear's reminder still holds: information only matters if it changes behavior. TL;DR: Steve...

The phrase "Lean journey" is used widely to describe an organization's transformation over time. It's either a phrase that invokes helpful imagery or it's...