Tag: Taiichi Ohno

In this post, I talk about my dental practices "need" to get Lean, my need to floss, and some of the tactics that help others change. You being right doesn't mean mean others will accept your Lean practices or your scolding about flossing nightly.

Back in 2014, I wrote an article for The Lean Post: "Standardization is a Countermeasure, Never the Goal" I'm a big fan of Taiichi Ohno's advice to "start from need." I cringe when I hear people say that we should standardize the way work is done "because Lean says so." There's no substitute for judgment in the grey areas related to standardized work. What should we standardize? For what purpose? How standardized should the work be? Baseball is struggling with questions like this... how standardized should the balls be... and for what purpose?

It's Monday morning in Nagoya, Japan as I write this. I'm still jet-lagged and up early, so here's a blog post after all... Sunday, I had the chance to visit the Toyota Commemorative Museum of Industry and Technology in Nagoya. There's so much that I can blog about...I'll write more posts about my museum visit in the future. In this post though, I share a little bit about some of the books that they sell - in English and Japanese...

Here's another post on the theme of performance metrics, as I'm talking about next week at Lean Startup Week (see yesterday's post or others...

Joining me again for episode 290 is a three-time guest, Eric Ries. When we first talked, in episode 115 six years ago, his New York Times bestselling book The Lean Startup was being published. In 2012, we discussed the impact of Toyota's Taiichi Ohno on his work, in episode 142. This time, we're talking about his new book, The Startup Way.

Last week, I mentioned it was the 25th anniversary of TSSC -- formerly known as the Toyota Supplier Support Center (it's now called the...

Today at 3 PM, I'm doing a webinar at the invitation of the BC Patient Safety & Quality Council, as part of their "Quality Café" series. Thanks for the invitation! It's open to the public and it's titled: "Standardize What Makes Sense... Then Engage Everybody in Improving What You Standardized" I hope you can join us...

Update: See the end of the post with some photos I took at the game yesterday where Beltre got his 3000th career hit -...

When did the term "concrete head" start getting thrown around in Lean circles? Do people still use this label today? Is it helpful? Should we agree that the term is disrespectful and counter productive?

When I was in England on vacation recently, I saw this column in the Financial Times: Listen to your employees and so increase their productivity And...

Thanks to my Amazon Kindle app on my iPad, I get to carry much of my book collection with me. Sometimes, while on the road,...

Last Friday morning, I partnered with Chip Ponsford, DVM, a doctor of veterinary medicine, to give an introductory Lean continuing education presentation at the annual conference of the Texas Veterinary Medical Association.