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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

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

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

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

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

I have a new post published on Assembly Magazine. See the full article on that site. An action plan is one of the most important parts of an A3 report. Turning ideas and conversations into crisp, focused action plans is something every lean leader needs to do.

True lean thinkers in positions of power are hard to come by, but Paul O’Neill may be one of the best examples we have in the US. Former head of Alcoa, former Treasury Secretary under President Bush (for a very short period), and founder of the Pittsburgh Regional Healthcare Initiative

If lean is about anything, it is about solving problems both large and small. Becoming a world class problem solving organization takes time. It requires learning new skills and developing the culture to truly invest in problem solving as a daily practice. But as you begin this journey, you can’t

In following the tradition of Twitter’s Friday Follows, where people share who they are following, I thought I would bring the same spirit of sharing to blogging (and encourage other bloggers to do the same). I’ll start with my all-time favorite lean blog, Mark Graban’s LeanBlog.org. I’ve known Mark since

A book that is more obscure than it deserves is Taiichi Ohno’s Workplace Management. When most people think of this father of the Toyota Production System, they focus on Taiichi Ohno’s Toyota Production System book. However, that book is more transcribed from Ohno’s thoughts. Workplace Management is more direct, and