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Find One Second of Waste
Coach Tracey Richardson shows you how she learned the importance of looking for waste everywhere, and how you can start being focused on finding it…
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Ask Art: Why Are the Four Lean Fundamentals So Important for Making a Conversion to Lean?
A review of the core lean elements reveals how — and why — lean management leads to higher enterprise performance.
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Craftsmanship – the Lost Art in Product Development
In his first job as an engine designer, Steve Shoemaker could visit 90 percent of final product value streams within an hour's drive of where…
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Detroit Auto Show Overshadowed by Dr. Womack's Trashing of Toyota
Jim Womack's most recent e-letter titled "Beyond Toyota"†has sparked a lively and even rancorous debate. "We all, even including Toyota, need to go beyond Toyota,"…
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Performance Versus Cost
Dear Gemba Coach: I am the continuous improvement director of a large hospital. We invested two years ago in a central machine to perform all the…
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Am I doing PDCA correctly?
Dear Gemba Coach: How do I know if I’m doing PDCA correctly?
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Developing Better Habits Using A3 Thinking
Think A3 thinking is only for solving organizational problems? Think again! LEI faculty Katie Anderson shares her secrets for using A3s as a tool for…
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A Connecticut Yankee Machinist in Toyoda’s Castle
“Culture matters,” John Shook tells us in his post about Charles A. Francis, an American who worked for Toyota group founder Sakichi Toyoda in the…
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Practicing What We Teach
"Do all Lean practitioners practice what they teach?" Maybe, maybe not. Tracey Richardson tries to as much as she can, and here's why.
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Using Cynefin to Solve Problems While Navigating Uncertainty
Kim Ballestrin, an agile coach, explains how her team at Telstra (an Australian telecommunications and IT company) uses a problem solving framework called Cynefin to…
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How Do I Tell Good Obeya Rooms From Bad?
Dear Gemba Coach: Obeyas are popping up everywhere in our organization, and I don’t know what to look for to distinguish good from bad obeyas.
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Turn on the Spigot: Create Flow in R&D
"Flow in R&D is as critical as in manufacturing," writes Terry Barnhart. "It is a little more difficult to see, which is why your company,…
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Ask Art: Why Should I Focus on My Balance Sheet to Grow Earnings?
Lean practitioners understand that focusing on this financial statement is the best way to achieve higher sales and lower costs.
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Understanding the True Value of the TWI Job Instruction Training Method
In this reflection, the author contends the training approach delivers something vastly more significant than merely a faster, more effective training process.
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Ask Art: Does lean compromise innovation?
To some, lean and innovation seem counterproductive. But Art Byrne is not one of them. Find out why he says "lean and innovation are and…
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Looking for split seconds, it can mean a NASCAR race WIN!
Tracey and Ernie Richardson explore how NASCAR pit crews use visuals for safety and speed.
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Coach's Corner: How to Design a Knowledge-Sharing System
Encouraging learning and knowledge reuse in your development process takes more than a system to capture it — you must create a system that people…
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The Power of Ma in Creating Cognitive Space
When we lead with respect for people, we need to truly understand that people work in different ways, argues Jim Benson in this piece about…
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Standards at workstations
Dear Gemba Coach: Our corporate production system asks us to post standard work at workstations, but we feel that the paperwork clutters the stations and operators…
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How can I tell if people “get” lean thinking; what signs should I look for?
Dear Gemba Coach: I’ve been training teams to do lean, intensively at first, and with paced-out coaching later. How do I know if they “get…
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