Blog

The 8 Common Wastes in an Office That Cause Downtime 0
- Lean Office
- February 12, 2013
Applying Lean to office processes is an often misunderstood concept. Many efforts at lean office often fall by the wayside since measuring improvement is nearly impossible. It is important to analyze the office processes themselves to determine how to apply lean appropriately. The best way to accomplish this is to first understand how the seven
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Quality Control is Not Quality Assurance 0
- Quality
- February 11, 2013
The terms “quality assurance” and “quality control” are often used interchangeably to refer to ways of ensuring the quality of a service or product. The terms, however, have different meanings. Control: An evaluation to indicate needed corrective responses; the act of guiding a process in which variability is attributable to a constant system of chance
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Lean Quote: Management Commitment is the Driving Force Behind Quality and Productivity Improvement 0
- Lean Quote
- February 8, 2013
On Fridays I will post a Lean related Quote. Throughout our lifetimes many people touch our lives and leave us with words of wisdom. These can both be a source of new learning and also a point to pause and reflect upon lessons we have learned. Within Lean active learning is an important aspect on
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Taiichi Ohno’s Workplace Management: Special 100th Birthday Edition 0
- Book Review
- February 6, 2013
TaiichiOhno’s Workplace Management was directly written by Taiichi Ohno, founder of the Toyota Production System. Many of his writings were transcriptions and interpretations of the man himself, leaving the reader to wonder how accurately it reflected the thoughts of this transformational leader. Jon Miller, both an experienced lean expert and fluent in Japanese, provides this
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What Makes A Happy Worker VS A Sad Worker?0
- Respect For People, Sharing Best Practices
- February 5, 2013
There is a lot of discussion and focus on employee happiness and whether happy employees are more productive or harder working. Maybe employers should begin taking a look at their sad or disengaged workers to determine if it is their position or job they are happy performing or not. Many companies use HR training in
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Lean Metrics Should Accurately Reflect the Process to Maximize Performance 0
- Sharing Best Practices
- February 4, 2013
On The Lean Edge Blog, last week was a discussion on Lean metrics. The question was, “Is there a Lean way to measure productivity?” I thought I would add my thought to the conversation. It is not enough to simply create a numeric measure. The measure should accurately reflect the process. We use metrics to
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Lean Quote: Ben Franklin’s 12 Virtues Provide Lessons in Leadership 0
- Lean Quote
- February 1, 2013
On Fridays I will post a Lean related Quote. Throughout our lifetimes many people touch our lives and leave us with words of wisdom. These can both be a source of new learning and also a point to pause and reflect upon lessons we have learned. Within Lean active learning is an important aspect on
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Epic Fail, Yes Fail Epically To Improve 0
- Leadership, Lean Management
- January 29, 2013
It seems nowadays everything is Epic. The word ‘epic’ is probably the most misused and overused word in the English language. Everything is epic this, epic that. Epic Thread, Epic Blog, Epic Win, Epic Fail, etc. But wait Epic Fail, yes we should. Individually they are defined: Epic– Anything great, spectacular, or large/monumental in nature.
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Daily Lean Tips Edition #42 0
- Lean Tips
- January 28, 2013
For my Facebook fans you already know about this great feature. But for those of you that are not connected to A Lean Journey on Facebook or Twitter I post daily a feature I call Lean Tips. It is meant to be advice, things I learned from experience, and some knowledge tidbits about Lean to
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