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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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,…
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Is there “mudagement” in your organization?
"Mudagement." What a strange word. But to Tony Lamberton, the concept behind that word has made all the difference in identifying invisible waste in his…
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The Secrets of Lean
"The key to Lean is that it creates understanding, not knowledge," write John Ehrenfeld (Executive Director of the International Society for Industrial Ecology) and LEI…
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A Brief History of Lean
Although there are instances of rigorous process thinking in manufacturing all the way back to the Arsenal in Venice in the 1450s, the first person…
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Lean Enterprise Institute CEO John Shook Wins Sloan Management Review Award for Best Article on Change and Organizational Development
Winning article on culture change lessons from NUMMI should be “required reading” for anyone concerned with corporate culture change, according to SMR.
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Assessing Problem Solving Capability in Job Candidates: A True Account
Last month, Derrick Redding shared three questions that you can ask job candidates to assess their problem-solving capacity. As a followup, he is now sharing…
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Lean Warehousing and Distribution Operations
Improve a distribution center's efficiency, quality, safety, and space utilization.
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What do effective leaders actually do every day? GTS4
So many of us know the value of lean thinking and practice, but what do lean leaders actually do every day? Tracey Richardson offers a…
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Beyond Toyota
Weíve won the battle of ideas on how to operate and improve processes. But creating management systems and organizations that can practice (not just preach)…
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