Tag Archives: Lean thinking

From Lean Tools to Lean Management

Posted on July 11, 2007 by John Hunter

From lean tools to lean management [the broken link was removed] by Jim Womack: The attraction of tools is that they can be employed at many points within an organization, often by staff improvement teams or external consultants. Even better, they can be applied in isolation without tackling the difficult task of changing the organization and the fundamental approach to management. I often say that managers will try anything easy that doesn’t work before they will try anything hard that … Continue reading →

Posted in Lean thinking, Management, Quality tools | Tagged , , ,

Lean Progress at Label Printing Companies

Posted on June 6, 2007 by John Hunter

Continuous Improvement [the broken link was removed], an article from the Label and Narrow Web trade magazine (“for the narrow web segment of converting and printing”), is an article with some nice anecdotes of successfully applying lean thinking. “The dollar ramifications are huge. We pay bills in 10 days now because we have fewer bills to pay, and now we have discounts. We made back the money we paid last year in interest on our credit line because we have … Continue reading →

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Learning Lean: A Survey of Industry Lean Needs

Posted on April 18, 2007 by John Hunter

A draft version of Learning Lean: A Survey of Industry Lean Needs [the broken link was removed] by Gene Fliedner and Kieran Mathieson is now available. This voice of the customer report is product of some of those involved in the Lean Education Academic Network. Conclusions: We studied what business practitioners think graduates need to know about Lean. Our results showed that practitioners are not concerned about specific technical skills. Instead, they want graduates to possess a systems view of … Continue reading →

Posted in Education, Lean thinking, Management, Quality tools | Tagged ,

The Georgetown Kentucky Way

Posted on February 27, 2007 by John Hunter

The Scott County Way [the broken link was removed] by Jillian Ogawa: It seemed only natural that Toyota’s corporate culture would influence the local schools, said Superintendent Dallas Blankenship. He estimated that one in three students in the school district have one or more parents that work for either Toyota or a Toyota supplier. The school district has had several partnership programs with Toyota in Georgetown. “Simply over time, we learned a lot of practices that have helped us to … Continue reading →

Posted in Education, Management Articles, Public Sector, Toyota Production System (TPS) | Tagged , , ,

Transforming With Lean

Posted on January 31, 2007 by John Hunter

Dave Gleditsch, Chief Technology Officer, Pelion Systems, makes many excellent points in: Transforming Your Business To Lean: Lessons Learned [the broken link was removed]: First and foremost, we should always keep the customer at the forefront of the planning and implementation process. A key to success is in being able to find the customer in every single metric you choose to measure your Lean transformation progress by. Often measures become the focus and the reason for improvement is obscured. Improvement … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Deming, Lean thinking, Management, Management Articles, quote | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Messiness is Good?

Posted on January 2, 2007 by John Hunter

Time to get organized? Not so fast [the broken link was removed], interview of David Freedman on Marketplace. Marketplace is a great show on PBS that covers economics and related matters. This interview, though, fails to inspire me. RYSSDAL: Is it expensive in a corporate sense to be neat? FREEDMAN: It’s extremely expensive. I mean let’s start off with the fact that U.S. corporations spend some $45 billion a year on management consultants. They come in and they help companies … Continue reading →

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Workplace Management by Taiichi Ohno

Posted on December 14, 2006 by John Hunter

Workplace Management [the broken link was removed] by Taiichi Ohno, translated by Jon Miller. This classic work by the founding father of the Toyota Production System returns to print in a new translation. Ohno delivers timeless lessons on how to effectively manage the gemba – actual place or work. He relates stories from across his nearly 40 years of struggle to establish the Toyota Production System as both a mindset and supporting behaviors of constant improvement. In the book’s 37 … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Lean thinking, Management | Tagged , , , ,

The State of Lean Implementation

Posted on October 2, 2006 by John Hunter

Interesting survey by the Lean Enterprise Institute notes the following as the major obstacles to transforming to a lean organization. 1 Lack of implementation know-how: 48% 2 Backsliding to the old ways of working: 48% 3 Middle management resistance: 40% 4 Traditional cost accounting system doesn’t recognize the value of lean: 38% I wonder if asking why several more times would help [broken link replaced with a new link]? It is not as though the difficulty in adopting lean thinking … Continue reading →

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Management Improvement History and Health Care

Posted on September 17, 2006 by John Hunter

Squeezing the fat from health care [the broken link was removed] by Hanah Cho is another article on lean healthcare. This one provides a better view of the overall picture – especially compared to all those claiming to be one of the first lean thinking effort in healthcare. A good sign was that the author referenced, Going Lean in Health Care, a great report by IHI (James Womack and others). It is nice to see a recognition of management history … Continue reading →

Posted in Health care, Management, Six sigma | Tagged ,

Japan Kaikaku Experience

Posted on September 14, 2006 by John Hunter

Mike Wroblewski is blogging a great series of posts on his Japan Kaikaku Experience, including Toyota Motor Kyushu: An interesting point is that the assembly line had a goal of only 97% uptime. They did not want 100%. It was believed that a goal of 97% was better (more realistic) and prevented quality problems from being slipped through. If the goal is 100%, the employees would say that something was not really a problem and let it go to keep … Continue reading →

Posted in Lean thinking, Management, Manufacturing, Toyota Production System (TPS) | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Going Lean Brings Long-term Payoffs

Posted on September 10, 2006 by John Hunter

Going lean brings long-term payoffs [the broken link was removed] by John Torinus: The growing number of Wisconsin manufacturers, and the few service companies, taking the lean journey are learning that it is not a sprint. … The immediate paybacks come in the form of saved space, less distance traveled, fewer handoffs, faster throughput, lower inventories and man-hours saved. I would state the authors next point differently. The early successes provide resources to invest in making large more fundamental changes … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Lean thinking, Management, Management Articles, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Toyota Targets 50% Reduction in Maintenance Waste

Posted on August 30, 2006 by John Hunter

Inside the Toyota Maintenance Reduction 50 Percent by Paul V. Arnold (sadly the site broke the link, so I removed it): First, it is Maintenance Reduction 50 Percent, not Cost Reduction 50 Percent or Employee Reduction 50 Percent. “The goal is to reduce maintenance activities and the maintenance that you perform on a machine by 50 percent. That goal covers every machine and every activity,” says TMMK facilities control manager David Absher. This is not about arbitrarily chopping budgets or … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Deming, Lean thinking, Management, Management Articles, Process improvement, Toyota Production System (TPS) | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Lean Leaders

Posted on August 28, 2006 by John Hunter

Lean leaders [the broken link was removed] by April Terreri: Tim Corcoran, vice president of ZF Sales & Services, NA, LLC, that re-manufactures automotive transmissions and steering systems in Vernon Hills, IL. “We had a number of false starts by implementing tools like kaizen, value stream mapping and the 5Ss,” he admits. “We found it’s really about the thinking and how we approach work.” Once he and his first-line managers participated in a lean workshop at Lean Learning Center, everything … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Lean thinking, Management, Management Articles, Psychology, Quality tools | Tagged , , ,

Danaher Practicing Lean Thinking

Posted on August 22, 2006 by John Hunter

Manufacturer’s Acquisition Strategy Sets It Apart From The Pack [the broken link was removed], Investors Business Daily: “It’s adapted from the Japanese Kaizen system,” Holmstead said. “Kaizen is a way of removing waste and standardizing processes and bringing underperforming or slow-growth companies with maybe single-digit margins up to midteen margins.” The keys are standardization, measurement and innovation — all directed toward the goal of continuous improvement. “It’s basically a set of tools that allows Danaher to make whatever widget they … Continue reading →

Posted in Investing, Lean thinking, Management, Management Articles, Manufacturing | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Lean Thinking in Printing

Posted on July 26, 2006 by John Hunter

How Going Lean Made Kell Better [the broken link was removed] by Kevin Cooper Lean is a total enterprise strategy. Lean thinking is not constrained to only manufacturing but a business strategy that involves the entire company. Many lean tools are implemented on a small scale to get momentum rolling, but your thinking about change should embrace the entire business model. Well put. Over the past few months, I’ve attended industry conferences in Scottsdale, Orlando, Richmond and Chicago. Of note, … Continue reading →

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Univ Michigan Hospital Adopts Toyota Methods

Posted on July 22, 2006 by John Hunter

U-M hospital takes page from Toyota [the broken link was removed] by Sharon Terlep. This continues the trend (trend rather than fad because I like that it is happening :-)) of hospitals adopting lean management methods. In health care, the one-at-a-time approach could mean taking a patient’s call, pulling the patient’s records, scheduling a visit and performing the exam that day, rather than creating a backlog of appointments or letting people crowd a waiting room. That way, if something goes … Continue reading →

Posted in Health care, Lean thinking, Management, Management Articles | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments