A Fresh Start: Lean Thinking for the New Year
- Goals
- January 1, 2026
A recent survey by Deloitte LLP and The Manufacturing Institute shows that Americans view manufacturing as the most important industry for a strong national economy. Americans also believe that a strong manufacturing base is important to our standard of living and national security. Manufacturing ranked higher than technology, energy, healthcare, financial services, retail, and communications
READ MOREI have never really been an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) or a Material Resource Planning (MRP) fan since they are really push systems based on sales forecasts. Some recent failures of our system have made me re-visit Lean vs ERP solutions. With traditional manufacturing resource planning (MRP II, the planning engine in most ERP systems
READ MOREIn the news yesterday Amazon.com announced its intention to acquire Zappos.com. Jeff Bezos, Founder and CEO of Amazon.com says this acquisition brings together two companies who share common values. Thanks to my fellow bloggers Ron Pereira and John Hunter for sharing these values with us. In a web video by Jeff Bezos to the Zappos
READ MOREIn the Lean community the eighth and often hidden waste is unutilized talent or resources. I especially like to highlight this since human capital is the vital engine needed to support a business. It is this talent where innovation and continuous improvement comes from. The challenge for all business management is learning how to tap
READ MOREMark Graban introduced a new “Lean Style” cartoon series called “Doofus and Leanie“. Many in the lean community know Mark as the founder of http://www.leanblog.org/ and a shingo prize winning author for Lean Hospitals: Improving Quality, Patient Safety, and Employee Satisfaction published in 2008. Now he is adding to his collection of literary works a
READ MOREIn all organizations meetings are necessary and natural to conduct business. As in all processes there are value added and non value added actions. These non value added actions can be very costly to companies and they don’t even “see” it. We have all been to meetings that don’t start on-time because people are late
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