A selection of highlighted blog posts from Lean bloggers from the month of September 2026.  You can also view the previous monthly Lean Roundups here.

Happy 13th Birthday, AllAboutLean.com! – Christoph Roser celebrates 13 years of sharing Lean manufacturing resources, reflecting on more than 660 posts and the changing landscape of online publishing.

Same Problem, Different Clock: Why “By When” Changes Everything – Jamie Flinchbaugh explains how adding time to a problem statement changes the nature of the problem and can sharpen how leaders frame and solve gaps.

Anywhere Work – Bruce Hamilton reflects on how work is changing and what that means for workers, work design, and Lean thinking.

Automation, calculators, and AI: is cognitive surrender real? – Kevin Meyer explores whether automation and AI can reduce the use of human judgment and problem-solving capability, drawing on lessons from Lean operations.

A 25-Year Déjà Vu Back to 9/10 (Not 9/11): The Deception of Massive Backlog – Kevin Meyer revisits a 25-year-old manufacturing experience to examine how a large backlog can create a misleading sense of demand and operational health.

The Sound of Breaking Glass – Ron Pereira uses a story about a broken glass cruet to explore how leaders’ reactions to mistakes shape psychological safety and whether problems remain visible.

The Kudos Conundrum – A Leadership Learning – Ricky Banks examines the balance between praise and criticism, using a manufacturing story to explore trust, leadership behavior, and positive feedback.

Using AI for Continuous Improvement of a Website | KaiNexus – Mark Graban describes using AI to remove digital waste from the KaiNexus website while applying Lean disciplines such as current-state understanding, testing, verification, and jidoka.

You Want a People-Centered Learning Culture. What’s Getting in the Way? – Katie Anderson explores barriers to people-centered learning cultures, including urgency, firefighting, leadership behavior, organizational systems, and psychological safety.

What The Rehearsal Gets Wrong About Pilots–and Right About Leadership Training – Mark Graban uses a cockpit scenario from The Rehearsal to explore psychological safety, speaking up, and the leadership behaviors that influence whether concerns are heard.

Kaizen & Abracadabra Innovation – Pascal Dennis contrasts incremental Kaizen with breakthrough innovation, arguing that leaders need the capability and mindset to nurture both.

One Simple Practice to Build Emotional Resilience – Katie Soule offers a simple daily practice of naming emotions to create awareness, distance, and a more intentional response to what we experience.

Ernst & Young to Motivate Employees with $100M in Bonuses to Be More… Human? – Christopher R. Chapman examines the tension between using bonuses to encourage human judgment and innovation while simultaneously promoting technologies that can shift work toward automation.

The Lean Transformation at Viwinco, Part 2: From Lean Fixes to Lean Redesign – George Taninecz continues Viwinco’s Lean transformation story, showing how the company moved from individual Lean fixes toward redesigning its custom-window production system.

From 40 Hours to 30 Minutes: How AI Will Remake the Shopfloor and Empower Workers – Matthew Savas describes how AI reduced a detailed time-study task from 40 hours to 30 minutes, highlighting opportunities to free workers from analysis drudgery.