Mark Graban is hosting Management Improvement Carnival #29 on the Lean blog, some of the highlights include:

• Standard Work for Managers = Go to Gemba (Joe Ely, Learning About Lean) “Get to the workplace. Look. Listen.”
• Designing What’s Right for Customers (David Pogue, NY Times) “So what goes through the minds of executives who don’t sweat the small stuff?”
• Muda, Mura (and Muri) in Health Care (Mark Rosenthal, Lean Thinker Blog) “Key Point: Separate the routine from the non-routine. Separate normal from abnormal.”
• Explaining Lean at a Bar (Mark Graban, Lean Blog) “I asked [the bartender] how it would be if the ice were in the far corner of the bar, requiring lots of walking back and forth all day. She said that would be horrible.”
• JIT and Jidoka are Useless… (Ron Pereira, Lean Six Sigma Academy) “Yes, the two pillars of the Toyota Production System – JIT and Jidoka – are absolutely worthless… if you don’t respect people.”

Read the previous management carnivals.

Please submit your favorite management posts to the carnival. Read the previous management carnivals.

• Freedom = Success (And not the other way around) by Polly LaBarre – “we’re literally laboring under a myth (namely, time put in + physical presence + elbow grease = RESULTS). Our assumptions about how work works, where we work, and when we work are relics of the industrial age.”
• The Hidden Factory: Would the Customer Pay for That? by Peter Abilla – “most companies are glad that they do not have to reveal how their product or service is created, for fear of their inefficient processes and wasteful operations revealed to the customer.”
• We Need More Slogans! by Brian Tingley – “We used to have a slogan a year, sort of a focus on one issue. But now, we produce a new slogan every week. And what’s the result? We have a declining safety record.”
• Some Questions for Managers by Mark Graban – “Do you label those who speak up and identify problems (those asking for help) as trouble-makers?”
• Notes from the Book – Four Days with Dr Deming by Scott Hassler – “Special causes can be fixed by the people implementing the process via such things as training. Common causes need to be fixed by changing the process.”
• Data is like Art by Mike Wroblewski – “I just assumed once data is proven that the data becomes fact and everyone can move forward in agreement… Facts are facts, right? Not so fast, my friends. It is not that simple.”

Continue reading →