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The (Real) Lean Firefighter: Bringing Lean to the Grand Rapids Fire Department
Brad Brown had no lean experience when he joined the Grand Rapids Fire Department (GRFD) in 2003. But as the Great Recession went into full…
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Flaatnes Elektro-Mek Reveals How Double Loop Learning Supports Lean Thinking and Practice
Every experience is a learning experience. However, we tend to only experience single-loop learning where we reaffirm what we already think is true. Lean gives…
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Standardized Worrying
Years ago when Dan Jones and I first visited Toyota in Japan, we were struck by something that seemed out of keeping with their continuing…
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Ask Art: What Do You Focus on When Assessing the Potential Gains From Converting to Lean?
Lean veteran Art Byrne shares the key areas to look at for gains to be realized from lean: focus on sales growth as the result…
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From Troubleshooting a Leaky Toilet Flapper to Innovating the Internet, a Comprehensive Problem-Solving Framework
Arriving at his hotel after midnight, author and business consultant Art Smalley just wanted to get some sleep before his keynote presentation later that day.…
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Use Jidoka to Avoid Death by 1000 Cuts
I’ve learned from experience the need for tech teams to adopt jidoka as a basic design consideration: getting it 100% right the first time with…
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How Can Lean Take Root in a Crappy Culture?
Dear Gemba Coach: I've done a lot of working with lean, and recently started my first coaching/consulting gig. And while I'd love to help by…
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Understanding Customer Value: How Accounting Applies this Foundational Lean Concept to its Work
Putting the entire customer experience first in thinking, not just the transaction, is the Lean Accountant's goal, asserts Nick Katko and Mike De Luca,
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Want to Respect Your People? Share the Profits!
People and profit are key in any company, not just a lean one. But too often, an organization's drive for profit can cause it to…
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Start Up By Diving Deep
"The important thing is answering some fairly core questions about your business before spending time and money developing solutions," write Jim Luckman and Durward Sobek.…
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How Many Whys Should I Ask?
Coach Tracey Richardson explains just how many whys to ask when conducting 5 Why analysis.
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Transcript for WLEI Podcast: Designing the Future, An interview with Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe and former COO Jim Morgan
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How to Engage Everyone to Create a “Continuous Innovation Machine”
In a presentation to hundreds of engineers at a Fortune 100 manufacturer, Jim Morgan, an engineering PhD and former product development executive, explained what distinguishes…
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Helpful Coaching? Part One: Who Says What’s Helpful?
David Verble, a lean practitioner and Lean Enterprise Institute faculty member, offers advice for what kind of coaching is helpful for people with problem solving…
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Insights and Advice from a Lean Accounting Leader
Why and how to get started integrating lean thinking and practice into accounting and finance at your organization.
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Profit and Cost At Toyota
Fresh off a tour of Japan where she observed how Toyota talks about costs and profit on the shop floor, LEI Chairperson Jean Cunningham shares…
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