Idea Management
I have a new post published on StartUp Blog at PartnerUp. See the full article on that site. This is a guest post by Jamie Flinchbaugh. I’ve met a number of people who want to start businesses but have been clawing away at the same idea for many years without
Read MoreValue Stream Mapping Font
I ran across this over the weekend. I was shocked, but also saw how simple this could make working with simple value stream maps on your computer. It’s a font you can download that contains value stream mapping symbols. You can download it for free from Ambor. I generally don’t
Read MoreBlog Action Day on Climate Change
Yesterday was apparently Blog Action Day ’09 on Climate Change. At my last check, 13,163 blogs are writing about climate change today. With that in mind, I partly want to just leave it at that because there is probably a lot said in 1,000s of blogs already. But I’ll add
Read MoreFriday Follows for Lean Blogs
What blogs do you follow? With twitter folks sharing their favorite follows on Friday’s, I think the bloggers should be doing the same. I’ve found that I’m learning and reading more from bloggers these days than magazines and journals. So I thought I would share some of the bloggers I
Read MorePut Down That Tool
This article was originally published by JFlinch on Oct 15, 2009. What tool should I use for solving this problem? What’s the right tool? There are many tools in the toolbox of lean for problem-solving and process improvement. When an organization teaches people to use the tools, there is often
Read MoreUnderstanding Total Cost
Do you know what your supply chain really costs you? Most companies don’t. They do know how much they spend on suppliers, but that’s just the transaction costs. There are many other true costs in your organization that are affected by the design of your supply chain. The design affects
Read MorePDCA in Non-Deterministic Systems
When does PDCA not apply? Can we say “not here”? Alan Shalloway attempted to address this for the software community in his blog last week. You can read his full post yourself. Apparently many in the software community (but not all, before you call me out on that) feel that
Read MoreWorking on the VERY BIG Problem
Do you have a starting point for your strategic plans? A very short post today, but I wanted to capture some thoughts on a meeting I was in this weekend. It was the presentation of a long-term plan. When it came to the rationale for the strategic plan, it started
Read MoreNo Rx for Lean
I have a new post published on Jamie Flinchbaugh on LeanBlog. See the full article on that site. by Jamie Flinchbaugh, I recently have had the opportunity to review a wide range of sites and companies and provide feedback on their lean journey. One of the things that really surprised
Read MoreRecognize For the Future, Not the Past
Many organizations have formal recognition methods within their organization that are used to highlight people and their accomplishments. Other organizations practice recognition more informally, in team meetings and even in hallways with simple “thank you for ____” statements. Neither of these are wrong, as long as you are practicing some
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