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When it Comes to Improvement Sweat the Small Stuff 0
- Lean Management
- March 6, 2013
You’ve probably heard both of these sayings before. “Don’t sweat the small stuff.” and “The devil is in the details.” That first statement would suggest that worrying about small things is a waste of time and resources, while the second statement suggests quite the opposite, telling us to pay very close attention to each detail.
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Rework Hampers Root Cause Analysis and Improvement 0
- Lean Management, Quality
- March 5, 2013
As a customer, you know how you feel when a supplier lets you down by giving you poor service or by failing to deliver the right quantity and quality product at the right time. When the shoe is on the other foot and you are the supplier we see it different. These situations usually mean
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Management by the Numbers Makes You Blind, Go Beyond the Numbers 0
- Leadership
- March 4, 2013
Businesses love numbers and every good business manager loves metrics. After all, the old adage, “You can’t manage what you don’t measure” still holds true in most management circles. However, a singular focus on metrics and worse, concentration on wrong metrics, keeps getting executives in trouble. But here’s the key thing about numbers: they tell
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Lean Quote: Small Improvements Are Believable And Therefore Achievable 0
- Lean Quote
- March 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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Deploying Lean in a Product Development Process 0
- Lean in Practice
- February 26, 2013
On The Lean Edge Blog this week a reader asked how to take Lean into product development: A consumer-products company has recently begun its Lean journey by focusing on Lean fundamentals starting on the shop floor (standard work, 1-piece flow, pull, work to Takt). The company is simultaneously refreshing its product portfolio. Although the cross-functional
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Guest Post: How I Quit Being a Door Mat 0
- Guest Post
- February 25, 2013
There’s a fine line between being a team player and ending up as the official doormat of your workplace. Most of the time, when your coworkers ask for your help, it’s because they’re genuinely too busy with important work to get everything on their plate done on schedule. Maybe their responsibilities expanded because cutbacks caused
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