In a March 2015 blog post titled "Abnormal Condition Alert," I said: Lean people are quick to criticize organizations with no Lean. We occasionally call out and criticize someone else’s bad Lean – their Lean. But we almost never criticize our Lean. This is an abnormal condition: Overproduction of … [Read more...] about Escape the Ideological Bubble
Lean Football
What would happen if Lean thinking were applied to American football?American football is in trouble. The league Commissioner and team owners know there must be changes made to the game to assure a future pipeline of skilled players and to grow its fan base for generations to come. But League … [Read more...] about Lean Football
That’s Not My Job
If you boil down Toyota's production system to its essence, its purpose is to synchronize supply to demand for buyers' markets. The ability to do so reduces the frequency and severity of stock-out (lost sales) or overproduction of finished goods (resulting in high costs and price discounting). The … [Read more...] about That’s Not My Job
Business as Experimental Science
Toyota’s management system is built on the true premise, concluded deductively, that problems are integrant to humanity. Because problems diminish human happiness and threaten survival – whether in life or in business – methods must be developed to do two things: solve problems and assure human … [Read more...] about Business as Experimental Science
Truth Has Consequences
A fundamental feature of Toyota’s management system (and its derivative, Lean management) is the search for the truth. Why? In order to make real improvement – versus merely the appearance of improvement – one must know what is actually happening. And herein lies a problem: People often do not want … [Read more...] about Truth Has Consequences
Selling Lean to Business Leaders
For many years, a large army of dedicated people have toiled to sell Lean management to the top leaders of businesses. Many different approaches have been tried, yet all have yielded virtually the same results. In most cases, we have been unsuccessful in selling top leaders the entire management … [Read more...] about Selling Lean to Business Leaders
The Outcome of Serious Research
“…the outcome of any serious research can only be to make two questions grow where one question grew before.” – Thorstein Veblen in “The Evolution of the Scientific Point of View,” University of California Chronicle, Vol. X, No. 4, October 1908, pp. 395-416Is Lean management research … [Read more...] about The Outcome of Serious Research
The Leader’s Prerogative
There is a continuing, decades-long, lamentation in the Lean community, that leaders do not understand Lean and that they misuse Lean for cost cutting which results in layoffs and other zero-sum outcomes. There is a belief that if only leaders understood the true intent of Lean, then they would … [Read more...] about The Leader’s Prerogative
How to Never Run Out of Ideas
"Every organization constantly deteriorates. And this is especially true of a business organization. It loses customers -- through death, through change in location, through the lures of competitors. It loses its personnel from the same causes. Its physical equipment is constantly wearing out and … [Read more...] about How to Never Run Out of Ideas