Lean Lessons from St. Patrick: A Saintly Guide to Continuous Improvement
- Leadership
- March 16, 2026

Some may say that it’s impossible to eliminate mistakes. And they are right; it is, most of the time. But, to be honest, they are missing the point. Poka yoke, or mistake proofing, describes any behavior changing constraint that is built into a process to prevent an incorrect operation or act occurring. The three aims
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Despite the enormous popularity of Lean, the track record for successful implementation of the methodology is spotty at best. Some recent studies say that failure rates for Lean programs range between 50 percent and 95 percent. A Lean journey is full of steps not all of which are forward. Failure will occur. Its ok, the
READ MORELean manufacturing is a very broad philosophy for business improvement that has many tools/techniques to aid you in making your production or service more efficient and better at offering your customer a great value. Being able to successfully implement Lean across a company is not something that you can pick up from reading a few
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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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In Paul Borawski’s post this month on The View from the Q Blog he asks about our experience with training. He shared some results regarding the matter from ASQ’s Global State of Quality research. (Remember, you can download the entire report for free at the above link.) From the research: “Organizations that govern quality with a
READ MORELean requires changing systems, organizational structures, processes, acquiring new technologies/machines, and even altering layout of the workplace. And although all of these components are important, the most important area of focus for Lean leaders are the people. Implementing Lean is a journey and has a huge impact on employees because Lean changes the way that
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