Visiting the Toyota Museum in Nagoya
While I’m in Japan this week (read about the trip), I’m going to keep my blogging light – my aim is to share one picture or thought each day. The tour starts on Monday with a visit to a Toyota…
Tag Toyota
Toyota Thinking: Leadership, Systems, and Continuous Improvement
Toyota is often cited as the inspiration for Lean, but its success is rooted in leadership behaviors, management systems, and a deep commitment to learning—not tools or slogans. This archive brings together blog posts, podcasts, and reflections on Toyota’s approach to quality, continuous improvement, psychological safety, and respect for people. Many of these posts explore what leaders outside Toyota often misunderstand—and what truly matters if they hope to learn from Toyota rather than copy it.
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A Panel of Early Lean Lab Innovators
This week, I was able to drop by the annual Lab Quality Confab event since it was being held in here in San Antonio. There were some things I heard during a few presentations about Lean or change management, such…
Watching the Steve Jobs “Lost Interview,” Part 1
Recently, I stumbled across something that’s been out for about a year, a lost video of Steve Jobs being interviewed in 1995. See this CBS News story about the video or you can rent the video via (what else) Apple…
Why “Lean Six Sigma” Misrepresents Lean Thinking (Just Call It 5S Six Sigma)
TL;DR: Many “Lean Six Sigma” programs misrepresent Lean as a set of tools layered onto Six Sigma. Lean is not a toolbox–it’s a management system and culture rooted in flow, quality, and respect for people. When Lean is reduced to…
Guest Post: Kaizen and Passion
Mark’s note: Today’s guest post is from a friend of mine from The Netherlands. I had a chance to visit Marc and his hospital back in 2009 and I’ve seen Marc and colleagues the last three years at the Lean…
Guest Post: 11 Common Misconceptions About Lean
Mark’s note: Here’s another great vacation guest post by Jeff Hajek: By Jeff Hajek Despite having been fairly main stream for going on three decades now, there are a surprising number of misconceptions about Lean. Here is a list of…
Guest Post: Reports of Kaizen’s Death are Greatly Exaggerated
Mark’s note: Today’s vacation post is from my good friend Dan Markovitz, who normally blogs here. Listen to my podcasts with him here and here. By Dan Markovitz: You’d think by now we’d be past this sort of nonsense that…
The Two Root Causes of Everything?
One thing I have enjoyed in the past few years is meeting and working with more people with direct experience working at Toyota (including here in San Antonio, my new home). There are always gems and brilliant nuggets that come…
ASQ Influential Voices: Quality & Social Responsibility (& Lean)
In this month’s ASQ blog post, their CEO Paul Borawski writes a new post “The Intersection of Quality and Social Responsibility,” where he defines Social Responsibility succinctly as “Doing well by doing good.” One reason I have always been attracted…
Google Nexus Q – Made in the USA
I’m not sure Google has much of a market for a $299 media player (with the AppleTV and Roku players being under $100), but it’s noteworthy that the new Google Nexus Q is made in the USA (see picture at…
Partial Transcript of Podcast #142 – @EricRies on Taiichi Ohno & #LeanStartup
Here is a transcript of last week’s podcast with Eric Ries talking about the impact that Toyota legend Taiichi Ohno had on his work and the Lean Startup movement. This discussion took place just after the 100th anniversary of Mr.…
Today Would Have Been Taiichi Ohno’s 100th Birthday
Hat tip to John Shook and the Lean Enterprise Institute for pointing this out via his email newsletter — today would have been the 100th birthday of Taiichi Ohno, usually credited as one of the creators of the Toyota Production…
