Tag Archives: lean management

What Does Respect for People Actually Mean?

“Respect for People” is a great short hand statement. There is a great deal of complexity packed into those words. At the simplest level respect for people requires systems that are designed with people in mind – systems are not … Continue reading

Posted in Lean thinking, Management, Psychology | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Software Process and Measurement Podcast With John Hunter

In my podcast with Tom Cagley, Software Process and Measurement Cast: John Hunter on Management Matters, as you might expect there was a bit of a focus on software development and agile software development as related to the ideas I … Continue reading

Posted in Books, Customer focus, Deming, Six sigma | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Respect for Everyone

TL;DR – The two pillars of the Toyota Way are: respect for people and continuous improvement. One of the big reasons my career followed the path it did (into management improvement) was due to the impact of respect for people. … Continue reading

Posted in Deming, Lean thinking, Management, quote, Respect, Toyota Production System (TPS) | Tagged , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

New Deadly Diseases

Management and the economy keep evolving. Many good things happen. In the last decade the best things are probably the increased deep adoption of lean thinking in many organizations and the adoption of lean and Deming methods in software development … Continue reading

Posted in Creativity, Deming, Economics, Innovation, Lean thinking, Management, quote, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 12 Comments

Long Term Thinking with Respect for People

Toyota nearly went bankrupt near 1950 and had to lay off a third of their employees. A huge focus of the Toyota Production System as envisioned by Taiichi Ohno was to secure the long term success of the company. The … Continue reading

Posted in Deming, Lean thinking, Management, Respect, Toyota Production System (TPS) | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Lean Manufacturing and the Toyota Production System

In this post I explore my thoughts about what lean (lean manufacturing, lean thinking…) means. The way I think about it is that lean manufacturing sprung from Toyota. It seems to me the lean manufacturing name was meant to capture … Continue reading

Posted in Deming, Lean thinking, Management, Toyota Production System (TPS) | Tagged , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Why Use Lean if So Many Fail To Do So Effectively

If less than 1% of companies are successful with Lean, why are we doing it? Lots of us are not. I would say the efforts I see “fail” are because they don’t do it. They have something they call TQM, … Continue reading

Posted in Deming, Lean thinking, Management, Process improvement, Six sigma, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 11 Comments

2011 Management Blog Roundup: Gemba Panta Rei

For my contribution to the 4th annual management blog roundup I will take a look at 3 management blogs. In this post I look back at the year that was at the Gemba Panta Rei blog. We are lucky to … Continue reading

Posted in Carnival | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Is Using the Words Resources or Assets When Talking About People the Problem?

I don’t have any problem with the words resource or assets when discussing people (I know lots of people seem to get excited about those words). What I care about is behavior and organizational systems that embody respect for people. … Continue reading

Posted in Deming, Lean thinking, Management, Psychology, Respect | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

Building Adoption of Management Improvement Ideas in Your Organization

Continuation of How to Get a New Management Strategy, Tool or Concept Adopted Target something that actually provides a good story. It often helps if there have been failures in attempts to solve a problem in the past. That makes … Continue reading

Posted in Deming, Management, Popular, Quality tools, Systems thinking, Toyota Production System (TPS) | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 16 Comments