Quality Magazine Archives

The 8th Waste in Modern Environments 0
- Lean Basics, Quality Magazine
- April 27, 2026
Lean thinking teaches us that waste exists in every process—but we don’t always expect to see it outside of traditional work environments. During a recent business trip, what should have been a routine rental car pickup turned into a powerful real-world example of all eight wastes in action. From waiting and overprocessing to the
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Standardized Work Isn’t the Problem — Our Thinking About It Is 0
- Lean Basics, Quality Magazine
- March 2, 2026
Say “standardized work” in a room full of professionals and you’ll see it immediately: crossed arms, skeptical looks, maybe even a quiet eye roll. Too rigid. Too controlling. The enemy of creativity. At least, that’s the reputation. And yet—standardized work remains one of the most powerful foundations of Lean, quality, and continuous improvement. So
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Strategic Planning and Deployment: A Tool to Achieve Excellence 0
- Quality Magazine, Strategy
- April 7, 2025
Strategy is not about simply listing important initiatives. It is about making deliberate choices, setting direction, and ensuring the entire organization moves toward a common purpose. Strategic planning and deployment provide a structured approach to translate vision into measurable action and sustainable results. Traditional management-by-objective approaches often focus on assigning targets without ensuring true alignment.
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The Role of Lean Daily Management in Sustaining a Lean Culture 0
- Daily Management, Quality Magazine
- January 15, 2025
Image Source: Morsa Images / E+ / Getty Images Many companies that experience great success with Lean hold kaizen workshops to rapidly implement Lean tools. It’s no secret, however, that many of these companies find that the improved system quickly reverts back to its non-Lean state. The problem is that Lean is a people-dependent system. All
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The Secrets to Creating an Effective Value Stream Map 0
- Quality Magazine
- December 11, 2024
Business is growing more competitive every day. In order to keep up with customer demand and expectations, companies are having to work faster and be more efficient than ever before. Value stream management is an emerging business process intended to gauge the flow of value into business resources and activities as well as the flow
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Podcast: Why Quality Professionals Should Consider Kaizen 0
- kaizen, Podcast, Quality Magazine
- October 7, 2024
I recently wrote an article for Quality Magazine on Kaizen where I explain why kaizen is a valuable tool that probably not enough companies take advantage of. If you want to be able to look at your process, if you want to uncover what pains you, these are the kinds of things that Kaizen allows you to
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