Article
Improving a Complex Process that Saves Lives: Lean Transformation at LifeShare Donor Services of Oklahoma
"This is a model, like a lot of good leadership models, where you teach people the thinking and then need to get the heck of…
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Video
Art of Lean on Problem-Solving, Part 4: Military Science and Leadership
Art takes a look at the military and their methods of teaching to see what lean can borrow, giving the coaching side of lean even…
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Article
From Agile Fatigue to Experimentation: Finding a Better Way in Development
In this issue of The Design Brief, LEI explores the limitations of agile and how Lean Product and Process Development can close its gaps.
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Article
Ask Art: Why Does Boosting Inventory Turns Matter So Much?
If you want to deliver more value to our customers such that you can grow and gain market share then you should certainly focus on…
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Article
What Finance Teams Can Learn from the Lean Practice of ‘Go See, Ask Why, Show Respect,’ - Part 2
A "lean accounting" coach illustrates what "go see, ask why, and show respect" means for Finance and Accounting professionals.
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Video
Art of Lean on Situational Leadership, Part 4: Supportive Style, from Basketball to Toyota
Part four continues the series' trajectory of further contextualizing situational leadership and lean thinking. By picking personal examples from his life, Art Smalley guides you…
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Article
The Chief Cause of Problems is Solutions
"In complex organizations, we [oversimplify] problems, try to fix them as painlessly as possible, cross our fingers, and move on to the next fire," writes…
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Article
Avoiding Dashboard Wallpaper
Build a system of dashboards up and down the organization, says Leslie Barker. Connect them so ideas flow upward and support flows to the idea.…
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Article
Anatomy of a Lean Leader (Introduction)
For 30 years, Jerry Bussell studied leadership while bringing lean practices to companies such as Medtronic and becoming a passionate, well-known advocate for lean. In this…
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Article
The Lean Farm: Better Food, Productivity, and Profits -- with Less Work
Farming may be the next industry ripe for disruption. For example, Ben Hartman grew up on a 500-acre corn and soybean farm where success meant…
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Article
We're working hard on problem solving so why don't I see any improvement in our problem-solving capability?
Dear Gemba Coach: We're working hard on problem solving, asking "why" repeatedly, and looking for root causes, but I'm afraid I fail to see any…
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The Art of Lean: Use These Tools to Help You Improve a Process, Part 2
Take a closer look into this four-step approach that will help you "pinpoint the tricky parts" of a process as you work to improve it,…
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Article
Why a Plan for Every Part Is Essential to Lean Transformations
“What’s needed instead is system kaizen in which the material-handling system for an entire facility, supplying every value stream, is redesigned to create a bulletproof…
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Why Coaching is a Core Skill of a Lean Leader
If "learning by doing" at the gemba is the best way to learn lean thinking and practices (and it is), coaching is THE skill leaders…
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Article
GM Veteran Lou Farinola Responds to, “Why hasn’t GM learned from NUMMI?”
John Shook discusses how GM learned from NUMMI with a former GM executive
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So Long 2009 - Hello 2010!
Whew, what a year! Most everyone I know is eager to escort the hard times of 2009 out the door in hopes of a more…
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Getting to Sustainability
Sustaining gains from kaizen thinking is one of the hardest, and certainly most misunderstood, aspects of this work. It’s misunderstood because the actual change takes…
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Article
It’s About the Tools, Not the Terms
"I’ve never been a big fan of lean lingo," says John McCullough of Crayola. "It may sound expert-like, but I’ve always found its use to…
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Article
The Fight for the Meaning of Lean
"It seems like every one and their dog is doing Lean," writes Michael Ballé. "But what 'Lean' are we talking about? Is it the 'to…
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Article
How do we get our boss to stop confusing inventory management with lean?
Dear Gemba Coach: Our new boss is a lean supporter and had us reduce drastically all inventories. Now we have missing parts all over the…
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