Article

Becoming Horizontal in a Vertical World

One of my favorite value-stream walks is with the senior managers of several organizations who share and jointly manage a value-creating process that stretches all…

by James (Jim) Womack, PhD

Article

How do you protect jobs while reducing lines and shifts?

Dear Gemba Coach: How do you protect jobs while reducing lines and shifts?

by Michael Ballé

Article

How Do I Change the Culture?

Dear Gemba Coach: I come from a company quite advanced in lean and I’ve joined a new firm as technical director. I’d like to apply lean…

by Michael Ballé

Article

What's different about implementing lean in a low-volume, high-variety environment?

Dear Gemba Coach: I manage a plant that makes highly engineered, low-volume products. What do I have to do differently from the high-volume guys to…

by Michael Ballé

Article

Why don't people learn from experience?

Dear Gemba Coach: On the gemba, we have many problems to manage every day. People don’t seem to learn from their experience. Is there any…

by Michael Ballé

Article

Can lean go wrong?

Dear Gemba Coach: Can lean go wrong? Can the ideas be misused and can the outcome be bad for the company? Is there any way…

by Michael Ballé

Article

Is promising that lean will make work more meaningful disrespectful to people?

Dear Gemba Coach: Can lean really make work more meaningful for everybody? Isn’t this overpromising to workers and disrespectful to them because management really can't…

by Michael Ballé

Article

How can I make sure my teams do kaizen the right way?

Dear Gemba Coach: How can I make sure my teams do kaizen the right way?

by Michael Ballé

Article

How important is it to consider differences in roles between our current project manager and a chief engineer?

Dear Gemba Coach: Management wants us to start lean in product development, but refuses to consider the difference in roles between our current project manager…

by Michael Ballé

Article

Rather than narrow problem solving, shouldn't we look for disruptive breakthroughs?

Dear Gemba Coach: How can a narrow focus on problem solving help us to find innovative solutions? Shouldn’t we be looking for disruptive breakthrough instead?

by Michael Ballé

Article

Who To Move?

Dear Gemba Coach:  "Kaizen Express" landed on my doormat this morning. While reading through I noticed that it states that if you get an operator saving…

by Michael Ballé

Article

How do I practice lean when I don't feel a strong attachment to my knowledge worker team?

Dear Gemba Coach: How do I practice lean consistently when I don't feel a strong attachment to my team? We do "knowledge work" and are…

by Michael Ballé

Article

How can we reconcile the lean principle of respect for people with our disrespectful atmosphere?

Dear Gemba Coach: My company's lean program stigmatizes competent people as “concrete heads” for disagreeing with the lean coaches, even when the coaches' prescriptions make…

by Michael Ballé

Article

How can I train technical experts who know more about the work than I do?

Dear Gemba Coach: I understand I have to train people, but I work in a very technical area and they all know far more about…

by Michael Ballé

Article

What's the main quality I should look out for in hiring a lean coach?

Dear Gemba Coach: I’m in the process of hiring a Lean Coach for my team and I wondered if there was any one quality I…

by Michael Ballé

Article

Why don't you use plain English instead of confusing Japanese terms such as “monozukuri” or “hitozukuri”?

Dear Gemba Coach: Why do you keep using confusing Japanese terms such as “monozukuri” or “hitozukuri” rather than plain English? Isn’t that what professionals do…

by Michael Ballé

Article

Is there a lean way of delegating?

Dear Gemba Coach: I’m an entrepreneur and I used to micromanage everything, quite successfully. Now the firm has grown and I’m trying to delegate. How…

by Michael Ballé

Article

Want Your Organization to Survive Over the Long Haul? Value Process Over Results

"There are two ways to run your business," writes Doc Hall. "Focus on value, or focus on results... Interestingly, when you focus on value, good…

Article

PDCA Is Really CA-PDCA -- and It’s the CA that Makes the PD Work

Why Grasping the Actual Conditions (firsthand as an automatic practice) at the beginning, during, and after a problem-solving effort is the most important part of…

by David Verble

Article

The Hunt for Alligator Eggs

"Like alligator eggs, problems often start small. If you wait a while and ignore them, those eggs hatch," writes Ellis New. "Wait a little longer,…