Month: November 2009

This is a guest post by Shawn Patterson from DTE Energy. You can learn more about Shawn from his LinkedIn profile, or as featured in Chapter 10 of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Lean. Probably the most powerful attribute of the Toyota Production System is the deeply ingrained principles underpinning all

Happy Thanksgiving. There are no presents for this holiday, but still many reasons for giving thanks. Interested in a little trivia? My birthplace of York, Pennsylvania can be thanking for giving us Thanksgiving as a national holiday. During the Revolutionary War, the Continental Congress declared a Day of Thanksgiving for

This is my last in the 4 part series on A3 problem solving. I’ll be answering more questions on a webinar hosted by the Society of Manufacturing Engineers which I hope you’ll check out and join. On to our final questions. Q8. Is there software that can help me with

I am continuing on with more Q&A about the problem solving process of A3, popularized through the use at Toyota and an effective coaching and development tool. So onto the questions. Q5. What is the best way to start? I think it is best to start on a problem that

Last Friday I started posting some Q&A on the transformation of problem solving using A3 methods. This is in support of a webinar I am leading on the topic. Here we continue to the Q&A. Q3. What advantages does A3 have over other problem solving methodologies? There are some advantages

On December 15th, I’ll be providing a webinar on the topic of A3 problem solving. I’ve been spending a good amount of time lately helping leaders from various organizations improve their lean thinking by utilizing A3 problem solving. In the following few blog posts, I’ll answer some of the common

A frequent question that I get is how far to take standardization. This is particularly true for multiple locations. Then the question becomes how far do you go to standardize from site to site. As with anything, to key to avoid getting lost in questions like this is to get

What’s the least expensive way to education people in your organization? Get them reading. There are now x,000 number of lean books available – I don’t actually know the number, but it’s a lot. At the Lean Learning Center, we buy everything we find for our book shelves as these

This is the thought process behind the reactions from managers more often than the words are actually spoken. Even if it were true, does that thought process help you improve? Does it help them? No, it just deteriorates the situation. Of course Forrest Gump had the ultimate response: “Stupid is

I am working on my next Leading Lean column and as usual, found myself really constrained by the word length limits of the column. I am writing on the topic of developing a lean education plan. Of course, this probably deserves to be turned into an ebook based on how