Article

Why Leadership Needs to Drive the Bus

"Lean change can start from the bottom-up, I won’t say that it can’t, but the situation needs to flip quickly to leadership so that leadership…

Article

Ask Art: How Do We Prevent Backsliding?

Backsliding is inevitable. "The key is to anticipate the backslide and take early, aggressive, organized steps to prevent it from happening before it starts," writes…

by Art Byrne

Video

Jim Womack and Dan Jones on the Evolution and Future of Lean

At the UK Lean Summit last month, Roberto Priolo caught up with Jim Womack and Dan Jones to talk about the current and future state…

by Roberto Priolo

Article

Are You Making Enough Mistakes?

How comfortable are you making mistakes? Do you make it safe for your team members to make mistakes? Boaz Tamir, Founder of Israel Lean Enterprise…

by Boaz Tamir

Article

Respect the Customer By Respecting Your Worker

Lean provides us with a different approach to this vicious cycle. Build a management system in your company that allows employees to make the best…

by Mark Reich

Article

Should I use an A3 report to kick off a problem-solving effort?

Dear Gemba Coach: Should I use an A3 report to kick off a problem? I encourage my managers to tell me about their problems on…

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

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

A Sensei in One's Own Land

In his first piece for The Lean Post, John Shook addresses the question of if, when, and how you and your organization should work with…

by John Shook

Article

Build Awareness Through Seeing How Eliminating Waste Reduces Costs

As we grow our people we must continue to add new dimensions of thinking to engage them in their work and to empower them to…

by Ernie Richardson and Tracey Richardson

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

Let Your A3s Lead

Coach Eric Ethington shares how simply getting started with A3s as a means of engaging others in this process is a tactical approach that works.

by Eric Ethington

Article

How One Company is Using Lean Fundamentals When Facing Disruption

Companies that have been built using lean principles are turning to these core ideals when confronting the unique challenges caused by today’s pandemic. Here's how…

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

Mura, Muri, Muda?

Twenty years ago this month, when my first daughter was born, the young men I supervised in MIT’s International Motor Vehicle Program went dashing out…

by James (Jim) Womack, PhD

Article

Emergency Departments Use Lean Principles in an Effort to Perfect Patient Journeys

Sixty hospital emergency departments in Michigan formed a collaborative to apply the value-stream improvement methodology to cut the length of stay for patients.

by Chet Marchwinski

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

Looking Back and Ahead at The Lean Transformation Summit

Read the highlights from the 2014 Lean Transformation Summit in Orlando (featuring transformation stories from companies like GE, Cardinal Health, and Food Bank For New…

by Chet Marchwinski

Article

Will Artificial Intelligence Replace Shop Floor Thinking?

How does lean thinking help understand whether AI could replace shop floor thinking? Jacob Stoller argues that whether or not one attributes this to an…

by Lean Sensei Women

Article

The Lives of Your Grandchildren Depend on Innovating New Healthcare Models

Renowned healthcare transformation experts examine what it will take to reinvent healthcare models through innovation and propose a new process for finding them.