Lean Office

Boeing Volunteers Helping Non-profits with Lean

An article in the April 18-12, 2008 issue of the Puget Sound Business Journal caught our eye. Titled Penguins will benefit from jet maker's efficiency lessons it describes the efforts of Boeing employees as lean trainers who have helped Seattle's Woodland Zoo with what sounds like a production preparation process more>>

Breaking Down Barriers to Continuous Flow

One way to look at lean is that it's all about enabling the continuous flow of actions, information, materials, services and cash in such a way that these things generate of goodness, however you may define that. The theory is that when things flow they take less time and resources. more>>

16 More Ways to See Motion Waste when Standing in th Circle

The stand in the circle activity is a great way to train your eyes to see waste on your gemba. Finding 30 small kaizen ideas in 30 minutes, and rapidly implementing at least one of those ideas is a practical and scalable way of teaching the kaizen mindset. But what more>>

Direct Instruction, Standardized Work and Kaizen

I learned about something called Direct Instruction in chapter seven of Super Crunchers by Ian Ayres. This book is a light and entertaining read on statistics and evidence-based decisions in marketing, education, healthcare and government policy. I recommend this to anyone who is interested in design of experiments, management by more>>

Sensei and Sensibility

Please excuse the pun. I'm increasingly convinced that awareness and sensibility outweigh knowledge and capability when it comes to being a Lean leader or teacher of kaizen. Taiichi Ohno called for a "revolution of awareness" and I believe his habit of making people stand in the circle was aimed at more>>

Steelcase to Bring Lean Office to China?

An article in the October 23, 2007 in the English version of the Chinese newspaper People's Daily hints at a future for the Lean office in China. Titled Furniture firm builds presence, it is largely corporate PR announcing the expansion of Steelcase office furniture consultancy services into the Chinese market. more>>

The Open Office Comes to Silicon Valley

An October 15, 2007 Wall Street Journal article titled Why Silicon Valley Is Rethinking The Cubicle Office explains how companies such as Cisco Systems, Intel, Autodesk, and Hewlett-Packard are either testing or planning tests with the open office concept. The motivations are space savings as well as improved collaboration and more>>

One Person, One Piece Flow

One piece flow is not just for the manufacturing shop floor. Actually – even in office settings where one piece flow is starting to come into use it is done with numerous people. I have been through Kaizen Products’ Factory Flow simulation, the one with the folding of the airplane, more>>

11 Ways to Improve Customer Service

Marcie MacRae posted an excellent article about customer service titled 10 ways to improve customer service based on her deep experience in that area and the 10 Commandments of Kaizen, which are rephrased here: 1. Let go of your fixed ideas and be open to new ones 2. Rather than more>>

Getting Started with Lean in the Office

One of the most common misconceptions about doing Lean in the office is that there is a different set of Lean tools for the office. We hear "What symbols should we use for value stream mapping in an engineering process?" or "What are the unique definitions of value and waste more>>

Autonomous Maintenance in the Office

We are going through some design change tests at the Gemba blog as long-time readers may have noted. While testing the various functions and features to send back fix requests to our developer, I came across some reader comments and questions that were posted but somehow missed (not addressed). One more>>

A Bureaucracy Which Enables Kaizen

The organizational characteristics of the Toyota Production System have been described as the combination of rigid and scripted rules with a high degree of flexibility to respond and change as needed. Thesis. Antithesis. Synthesis. These two opposing characteristics are not often found existing together as a high functioning organizational model. more>>

Newt Gingrich Wants to Kaizen the U.S.A.

Newt Gingrich wants to kaizen the U.S.A. He talks of "a world that works, and a world that doesn't" using the example of FedEx versus the U.S. Federal Government in this video clip on Youtube. In an August 7, 2007 speech at the National Press Club (you can find the more>>

Toyota Production System Applied to Software Development

Some of the most interesting insights into the Toyota Production System come from the experiences people have with implementing the TPS outside of manufacturing. Whether it is in schools, hospitals, or software development firms, the challenge of understanding and applying the principles of the Toyota Production System result in new more>>

Lean for Airports (Dare to Dream...)

The new Nagoya International Airport was famously built under budget and faster than scheduled thanks to help in Lean thinking from Toyota advisors. In another example of public-private partnership, a July 17, 2007 Computerworld UK article reports that Lean methods drive Heathrow Terminal 5 development. British Airways (BA) plays the more>>

Three More Ways to Increase Personal Productivity through 5S

The discipline of 5S increases personal productivity by making your work environment simpler, more structured, and safer. Much of the time that is saved is time not spent looking for things by being able to see right away whether everything you need to be productive is ready or not. There more>>

The Apple iPhone Experience is Not Lean Consumption

One way to reduce wasted time waiting in airports or in rental car queues is to read and respond to e-mail. This requires a devices such as a blackberry or high-end mobile phone. So far this is a luxury I've lived without but with all of the travel lately it more>>

Standard Work for the CEO

A great thing about blogging is that it becomes a visual management tools for our company. In many ways, what we are doing is posting standards about how we think, teach and manage at Gemba. This is free and open for all team members, customers and readers to see, so more>>

Half of the intel in Google is wasted

You know you're a jaded TPS sensei too long in the Lean business when you read a headline like the one on 13 June 2007 in CNet News announcing Half the electricity in a PC is wasted: Intel, Google and your first thought is "Only half is wasted? Not bad." more>>

How to Get Your Time Back

They say time is the only resource you can't get any more of. Wouldn't it be great if you could get your time back? All of that time that was lost, wasted or simply misplaced - if we could only get it back, we would promise spend it more wisely more>>

Kaizen of the Month for May 2007: Windows Hack *or* Chopping Away at the Six Big Losses

Improving OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) by eliminating the six big losses is the focus of TPM (Total Productive Maintenance). Just as most industrial machinery is only 13% to 40% effective prior to TPM implementation, the same is true for personal computers running Microsoft Windows. The six big losses of TPM more>>

Five Lean Ideas to Reduce Hotel Energy Waste

Five small things this European hotel chain is doing to reduce energy waste: 1. The lights, television, etc. turn off when you take key card and leave the room 2. The lights in the elevator turn on only when the doors open and you walk in 3. There is an more>>

Wisconsin Continues to Lead in Lean Government

We've written before about the support by the State of Wisconsin for Lean manufacturing efforts for companies in that state, as well as efforts to bring Lean practices into government itself. Lean manufacturing support by government, and for government, has a new champion on Wisconsin: Mary Burke, the Secretary of more>>

Building Quality Into the Teaching of Medicine

Jidoka applied to medical education. What a day. The University of Kentucky News announced that they are Applying Lean Manufacturing to Medical Education. The article Lessons from Industry: One School's Transformation Towards "Lean" Curricular Governance is one of the most interesting articles on application of Lean manufacturing I have read more>>

Who is the Lean U.S. Presidential Candidate for 2008?

Back in 2005 I made a very early endorsement for the Lean U.S. Presidential Candidate for 2008. Now that the date is closer and the field of candidates has expanded, it's time to take another look. The aforementioned endorsement is officially suspended. Governor Tom Vilsack was a hopeful, based on more>>

Review of The Elegant Solution by Matthew E. May

The Elegant Solution: Toyota's Formula for Mastering Innovation by Matthew E. May is a book about many good ideas. It adds relevant and interesting accounts of the author's eight years working closely alongside Toyota people. The book offers a good balance of Toyota-isms examined in a new light, and favorites more>>

White Space Muda

I heard a story about a Toyota employee. This was years ago when Toyota Motor Sales merged with Toyota Motor Company to form Toyota Motor Corporation. The employee from Motor Sales asked for paper to write a report. A woman in the office gave him one sheet of paper. "If more>>

Work in Process in Knowledge Work

The Lean principles of the seven types of waste, flow, building in quality at each step, and making small improvements locally each day are all readily accepted by knowledge workers with a minimum of explanation and demonstration. Visualization and standardization are more difficult for knowledge workers to understand and accept. more>>

Nine Rules for Fighting Endless Meetings

I've heard that at Toyota the meetings are 60 minutes long, with 50 minutes of actual meeting time and 10 minutes to get to the next meeting. The use of the standardize A3 size one-page format to communicate the progress on PDCA problem solving keeps meetings on time. This is more>>

Taking the Toyota Production System to City Hall

There was an encouraging article about Lean government in the March 15, 2007 NB Online (Nikkei Business) titled City Hall in Aichi Studies at Toyota to "Enhance the Capabilities of the Staff" (愛知の市役所がトヨタで修行して「職員力」アップ). Takahama City in Aichi Prefecture, Japan, has been studying with Toyota since the end of 2005 in more>>

The War On Waste

During training in how to do kaizen, a key activity is helping people understand the concept of waste and make it relevant to their own organization and to their own work. As long as waste is something abstract, or something that happens in the factory but not in software development more>>

Quick Changeover and SMED for the Office

Sonu asked, "Can single minute exchange of dies concept be used in office?" Yes! Since SMED or single minute exchange of dies refers to changing dies, moulds, and tooling in under 10 minutes, we might want to call this Quick Changeover so that it doesn't seem so foreign to people more>>

Scott County Schools Trying Out the Toyota Way

Today's article in the Lexington Herald-Leader made my day a little bit better. The Scott County Way: Educators take a page from 'The Toyota Way' to boost curriculums: It seemed only natural that Toyota's corporate culture would influence the local schools, said Superintendent Dallas Blankenship. He estimated that one in more>>

Let's Establish a Waste and Efficiency Tip Line... and then Another One

I caught a rerun of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart last night on television. The bit of news involved the $22 billion in cash lost in Iraq during Paul Bremer's time there. Both political parties want to be seen as addressing this problem, but sadly not as a team. more>>

Standard Work Needed for Use of Windows

In chapter 32 of Taiichi Ohno's Workplace Management, Ohno said, "There is a correct sequence to kaizen." We must first study and improve the work itself (manual work) then improve the process (sequence, steps) and then improve the machine. The idea is that you should not buy a machine without more>>

Kaizen of the Month at Gemba, December 2006

By Marcie MacRae Going into the holidays and having the majority of the staff out of the office can be a good time to implement a big kaizen in the office. This year while staff was on winter holidays, the admin team and two consultants set out to improve our more>>

Top Five Non-Lean Things Gemba Did In 2006

Inspired by the "tag" idea from Mark Graban over at the Lean Blog, from our hansei list here are the top five non-Lean things Gemba did in 2006: 1. Trying to do too many things. How hard is it to walk the talk? Take Hoshin Kanri. Really hard. Wow. Letting more>>

Making a Business Out of Organizing (Making You Feel on Top of Things)

I came across Productivity Cafe, the blog of Susan Sabo of Organizers, Inc. today. She is an author, speaker and consultant who "helps people feel on top of things by training, coaching, and persuading them to be more organized and productive" according to her bio on the blog. There are more>>

The ROI of an Open Office

What is the ROI (return on investment) of an open office? That was a question some while back by a reader on this blog about to take the leap and convert their office to an open format. It went unanswered (apologies) and I was recently reminded of it. There are more>>

Kaizen of the Month at Gemba, November 2006

Like many companies, we make a lot of improvements each month at Gemba. We don't always think to write them down or celebrate them. We will "kaizen the kaizen" by writing them down in an effort to be more mindful about the wonderful kaizen ideas that we all have and more>>

Applying Lean Manufacturing to University Libraries

Nancy Kress is the Head of Bookstacks at the University of Chicago. Nancy says in her libraryassessment.info posting on November 5, 2006: I like to tell people that what I really do is line operations management. My challenge is to manage forty-plus staff and students to accurately and efficiently maintain more>>

Toyota Botches Lean Implementation at Japan Post?

A Lean service implementation has been in progress for the last three years at Japan Post, the public sector entity that is Japan's postal service. Japan Post is slated to be privatized in 2007, and Toyota executives were involved in launching JPS or "Japan Postal System" a project to do more>>

How Wipro Adapted the Toyota Production System to IT Work

An article titled How Wipro Took a Leaf Out of Toyota’s Book in DNA - Daily News & Analysis on October 15, 2006 talks of how Wipro has successfully implemented the Toyota Production System in an IT business. Wipro is an Indian firm providing back office operations handling medical claims more>>

How Do U Spell Quality?

I spent four nights recently at Quality Inn, an American hotel chain. It was a pleasant stay, and not without its lesson in kaizen. I came back to the hotel one night to notice the following: I couldn't resist taking them up on their quality policy. Full marks to Quality more>>

Free Turnaround Advice to All Struggling Airlines

It started out as a routine one hour flight delay and missed connection. Snowstorms in the winter, thunderstorms in the summer. When you are traveling by air through the Midwest, plans that don't go according to plan are almost a given. We arrive in Minneapolis and the passengers shuffle off more>>

Scottish Local Authority Wins Award for Kaizen

Congratulations to the Aberdeenshire Council on winning the top Performance Improvement Award from UDITE – The Association of European Local Authority Chief Executives for their kaizen efforts. Read all about it in the Buchan Observer. Kaizen in the public sector, how sweet the sound... more>>

Lean Government Buzz in Scotland

There's a bit of Scottish blood in me from my father's side and it makes me proud of every drop whenever I hear of the Lean government work Scottish public servants are doing. The September 28, 2006 edition of the Scotsman correctly reports Copying Toyota Would Put Scottish Public Sector more>>

Good Example of Pokayoke through Software Code

The September 28th post on the VerySimple Dev Blog offers a solution to one particular time waster in the office: visiting the Digg.com website. Turning e-mail or your cell phone off to avoid interruptions is relatively easy. Not surfing the internet during office hours can be harder, and the batch more>>

A Heijunka Economy

As summer officially comes to a close in the United States this weekend with the kick-off of the American Football season and something Americans call Labor Day, I find myself thinking about heijunka (averaging of both your demand volume and product mix to smooth out production). As a small business more>>

Look Up from Your Work and Ask: "Could We Flow This?"

At the center of the Toyota Production System, and therefore of Lean manufacturing, is the fundamental principle of creating flow. For example in a machine shop this means connecting processes so that an operator can be a multi-process handler and not just a multi-machine handler. In multi-process handling the work more>>

While We're Promoting Lean Author Interviews on other Blogs...

Shmula is a blog with a funny sounding name (who am I to talk?) and the occasional gem of a post about Lean. There is an August 28th interview with Mary Poppendick, author of Lean Software Development and Implementing Lean Software Development. She answered 12 questions from the readers of more>>

E-mail 5S

A Wall Street Journal article today says How You Handle Your E-mail Inbox Says A Lot About You. The article identifies that e-mail is overwhelming people. There is an example of one person who was stressed out by 500 e-mails in their inbox, another who had 10,000 e-mails in their more>>

This Is An Experiment

A few weeks ago when I returned to our office after having been on the road for several weeks there were some big changes. The entire layout of the office had been flipped from one side to the other. This is not so hard to do since we have put more>>

How Can American Government Meet Its Productivity Challenge?

So asks a white paper by the same tile by the folks at global management consulting giant McKinsey & Company. The white paper cites an interesting statistic. The 2005 U.S. federal budget outlay was 20.3% of the GDP of the United States. If Pareto principle holds true, 80% of the more>>

Kaizen in Software Development: Start by Seeing the 7 Wastes

It's worth repeating time and time again that what makes an organization Lean is not whether they have implemented the methodologies, tools and procedures that people recognize as part of the Toyota Production System model. In other words what is important is not whether you have kanban systems or don't, more>>

See It, Smell It, Shanghai is Changing

Speaking of change, I arrived in Shanghai, China a couple of hours ago. It's quite a change of scenery from Seattle. There's a forest of yellow construction cranes across the highway from the airport building what looks like... another airport. On the way downtown from the airport the maglev (magnetic more>>

5S in the Office Saves Space, Expense Money and Time

Here are some photographs from a recent office 5S activity at one of our clients. Both 5S and a redesign of individual desks and workstations are part of the Lean office effort to help improve productivity and quality. The office layout is being redesigned to be more open and visual. more>>

The Top 10 Reasons to Start Lean Office and Lean Manufacturing at the Same Time

Most manufacturing organizations start their Lean journey on the factory floor first. Many soon recognize that meaningful, lasting improvement is only possible if Lean principles are also applied to administrative processes that support and enable manufacturing. Some companies have not yet recognized that Lean principles apply equally well to financial, more>>

Credit Suisse Does Gemba Research

An article in this month's Fast Company magazine asks Talk to Our Customers? Are You Crazy? The approach Credit Suisse is taking to understand the problems with their products and processes is basically research by going to the gemba. This genchi gembutsu approach at Credit Suisse is challenging the assumption more>>

How Toyota Uses Information Technology (IT) for Kaizen

There is a staggering amount of good material being printed these days in the Japanese press about kaizen, the Toyota Production System and issues of manufacturing and business competitiveness. I just wish I had more time to read the magazines and books that Brad Schmidt sends over from our Tokyo more>>

Trying Out Herman Miller's New Cubicle: Not for the Lean Office

Herman Miller is credited for introducing the original cubicle. Instead of recognizing poor design and listening to the voice of customer, they have designed a better cube or according to designer Douglas Ball "an environment that offered a sense of territory and privacy, but also openness, all within a 6' more>>

Doing More with Less in the Lean Office

"An increasing number of local companies are shrinking their employees' work spaces" begins an article in the Puget Sound Business Journal titled Offices Getting Smaller. Well known firms in our neighborhood including Boeing and Washington Mutual are moving into smaller work cubicles and more conference spaces. Scott Harrison, President and more>>

Sell Complacency, Buy Kaizen

On June 12, 2006 Minyanville News & Views commentary money manager Ryan Krueger gave the advice "sell complacency, buy kaizen". He sees the U.S. as complacent, giving evidence for the eroding dominance as the number one economy, and labels the emerging markets "kaizen", eager to improve. Although oddly Krueger isn't more>>

Lean Thinking & Google's 9 Notions of Innovation

I’ve written from time to time about the relationship between kaizen, Lean process and innovation in this blog. Innovation is the hot thing at the moment as the United States struggles to cope with what appears to be the increasing irrelevance of its manufacturing sector. Making things is out while more>>

Kaizen in the School System: Reading, Writing, Arithmetic and Problem Solving

Larry Davis, president of Daman Products Co. Inc. of Mishawaka, Indiana wants schools to teach the fundamentals of Lean management and kaizen-style problem solving from kindergarteners to high school students. Daman Products has been pursuing Lean manufacturing since 1997. Today they struggle to hire people who fit into their Lean more>>

The Lean Office & The Typewriter of the Future

I took typing classes before it was called “keyboarding”. The first manual typewriter I used was a fascinating and alien collection of metal eyes and teeth, a beautiful piece of industrial design like the one below. The march of progress soon replaced this with electrical models of questionable value, and more>>

Hoshin Kanri Lesson: No Plan Goes According to Plan

Having completed the second day of the Hoshin Kanri (Policy Management) session with LEI, I can say that I learned that no plan goes according to plan. Our instructor Pascal Dennis used this phrase several times over two days to drive home the point that it’s okay if things don’t more>>

Lean Broadcasting? NHK Calls Toyota for Help with Kaizen

Another embattled Japanese state-owned enterprise asked Toyota executives for help with kaizen yesterday. NHK (the national broadcasting corporation) has requested that Toyota send an official to join the board of directors of NHK. Toyota said "yes" within 8 hours. Toyota agreed to provide an executive, who would retire to join more>>

Lean Food Service: Cut Overproduction, Feed the Hungry

One of the informal definitions of Lean manufacturing is "doing more with less". A Puget Sound Business Journal article titled Throw Out Less Food and Help the Less Fortunate made a lot of sense to me. It maps out some practical steps to achieving Lean food service and social good. more>>

What is Lean Government?

As Lean manufacturing and “Lean fill-in-the-blank” take root in mainstream business consciousness I am noticing more mention of “lean government” by politicians in sound bytes as well as press releases and articles. I’m afraid that to many people Lean government means something similar to the dreaded “lean and mean” or more>>

5S Your Desk: And Other Tips for Office Productivity

"I know where everything is." How many times have you heard (or given) this rejoinder to "please 5S your desk"? It's hard to argue the logic of "cluttered desk, cluttered mind" when a desk is an emotionally charged personal space, too often nearly a shrine adorned with family photos, sports more>>

Herman Miller NT Furniture is NoT Lean

At Gemba we advocate something called the “open office” both for ourselves and to support the Lean transaction efforts of our clients. The open office is exactly what it sounds like, a Lean office area with as few walls as possible. So imagine my horror reading an article in the more>>

State of Maine a Leader in Lean Government

Last week Stephen Crate who writes for the blog at iSixSigma.com on Lean government turned me onto the great work being done with Lean government at the State of Maine. Many thanks, Stephen! According to information on Stephen Crate's blog: - The Maine Department of Labor began their Lean transformation more>>

Aberdeen Authority Reinvests in Kaizen Blitz Team

Following up on Lean government news from Scotland, an article in The Buchan Observer tells of the challenges of making ends meet in Aberdeen. Costs are rising, as are fees and taxes but 16 million punds sterling have been saved through kaizen efforts. Sensibly, part of these kaizen savings will more>>

Kaizen Resultant Gets Lean Government Results in Scotland

In Lean government news, kaizen is taking place in the Scottish government according to the Scotsman online news. An article titled The Man Who Would Save Scottish Industry on Sunday profiled kaizen consultant, excuse me, resultant Stuart Ross. Mr. Ross has been doing good work with kaizen not only in more>>

Chief Quality Officer of GE: Six Sigma is Dead

The January 30, 2006 BusinessWeek article titled Would You Recommend Us? introduces something called "net promoter" scores being used by GE Healthcare to measure customer loyalty. Simplified, it's a metric based on how many customers would recommend the product heartily ("10") versus not at all ("0"). A high net positive more>>

Lean Office "Open Room" Foils Unethical Recruiter

At Gemba we do our best to practice what we preach. This means that we turn our Lean tools inwards on ourselves and work hard to develop a kaizen culture. One of the most visible ways we do this is through our “open office”. There are no walls in our more>>

Hope for Lean at Local Government Levels

A posting on the Evolving Excellence blog titled Putting Perfume on a Pig paints a grim picture how a panel of some of the so-called best minds brought together by the U.S. Department of Commerce think of U.S. manufacturing. Making things is out, thinking about things to make is in more>>

Business Process Outsourcing, Meet Value Engineering

There's a good article today in The Hindu Business Line that talks about how BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) firms in India are using kaizen, six sigma, Lean transactions and value engineering to streamline its already lowest-cost processes. The article begins with a good brief history and overview of value engineering more>>

Lean Engineering and Taking Down the Walls

Earlier this week I visited a customer who is just starting out with their Lean transformation. They are an engineering firm. They have toured another one of our clients who has succeeded in implementing Lean in their transactional areas. They have good support from senior management and they have already more>>

I'll Have Some Innovation Please, but Hold the Kaizen

Predictability can be a good thing or a bad thing. A friend of mine named John Cass is a guru in the areas of PR and corporate blogging. John pushed my buttons by pointing me at an article by Knowledge@Wharton from the Wharton School of Business. He knew it would more>>

A3 Report Title: 189 Apologies

We don’t manufacture automobiles, but I know a bit about how it must feel when automobile companies issue a recall and have to ask many thousands of customers to bring in their vehicles to fix a flaw they have discovered. We found out last week that between July 2005 and more>>

Lean Food Service in Korea Factory Cafeteria

I’ve been a fan of Korean food for a long time, but now I’m also a fan of Korean kitchenware. I've always thought the steel chopsticks were particularly a good idea. Here's my dinner on a washable, reusable dinner tray used in a cafeteria in a factory in Korea. Why more>>

The Kaizen Cops Clobber Government Waste in Kenya

I've been chuckling quielty to myself for the past couple of days over an article I read. Now that I have internet access, I'd like share it with you. The Kenya News Agency headline screams ""Panic as Team Makes Abrupt Lands Office Visit". Quoting the article "Tension gripped the Murang誕 more>>

Setting the Bridges to Nowhere to the Torch

It's been a good week for Lean government. First Senator Joseph Lieberman says he will bring a "little of your Kaizen attitude back to the United States Senate" while visiting a factory doing Lean manufacturing in Connecticut. Then there was the U.S. Navy's renewed commitment to kaizen through a merger more>>

NAVAirspeed Merger to Take Kaizen to Next Level

I've recognized the commitment of the U.S. Navy to to kaizen, six sigma and continuous improvement and their achievements through NAVAIR Airspeed programs before in this blog. I'd like to recognize them again. The regular postings on the dcmilitary.com site are always a ray of hope for Lean government. Today more>>

Peter Pan, Kaizen and Joseph Lieberman

An article in today's New Britain Herald brightened what was otherwise a rainy, jet-lagged winter day here in the Puget Sound. Connecticut is a hotbed of Lean manufacturing and kaizen activity. Many clients of the Shingijutsu consulting company and early adopters of kaizen are based in Connecticut. These include Danaher, more>>

Lean Government Update Nov. 9, 2005

New Lean Government Champion in Mesa, Arizona A new potential Lean government champion hit our radar today with the appointment of Christopher J. Brady as the City Manager of Mesa, Arizona. Based on the azcentral.com article Mr. Brady brings Lean government creds including a pledge to "talk to the 'front-line more>>

Genchi Gembutsu in Aceh, Indonesia

Indonesia was not high on the list of places I thought I would read about an example of Lean government. So I was pleasantly surprised to find an article on the front page of the November 2, 2005 Wall Street Journal titled After the Tsunami, An Aceh Surprise: Good Government. more>>

Lean Website Design, Part 3

Jump to Part 1 Part 2 5S Search Space Organization The 5S Lean tool is synonymous with "workplace organization" or in the case of the internet perhaps "search space" organization. There are five "S" words that guide you though this activity. I'll apply the 4S that Toyota uses since the more>>

Lean Website Design, Part 2

Jump to Part 1 Part 3 Focus on the Customer The first step in kaizen is asking "What do our customers want?" It's not easy on the internet to "go to Gemba" as we say in Lean circles. Gemba is the actual workplace where we observe and gather data on more>>

Lean Website Design, Part 1

Jump to Part 2 Part 3 One of the hats I wear at Gemba is Marketing & Sales so it falls on me when it comes time to kaizen the effectiveness of the content of our website. We are a kaizen consulting company and we try to practice what we more>>

How Not to Spend $453 Million

Listening to the radio on my commute last week I heard a perfect example of the opposite of Lean government. I'm always bothered by waste but this was truly disturbing. In the highway bill signed this summer there is what is known as "the Bridge to Nowhere" connecting Alaska's Gravina more>>

Kaizen in the Arabian Peninsula

Oman now has something called The Lean Government Award. Oman is a country located on the toe of the Arabian Peninsula with a population of about 3 million. Oman is one of a number of states in the area who have been actively studying kaizen. For instance the Department of more>>

Governor Vilsack Brings Lean Government to Iowa

In a TPM Cafe blog entry titled Making Government Work, Governor Tom Vilsack of Iowa talks about how he is bringing Lean government using kaizen and other tools. Just a sample on this Lean government blog entry: "We combined four departments of government into one administrative agency, which improved service more>>

Postal Service Provides Model for Lean Government

It would be easy to point out how non-Lean the U.S. government has been at city, state and federal levels these last few weeks. We've seen examples of lack of decision making, poor logistics, lack of alignment of goals, poor communication between functional areas and poor planning to name just more>>

Postal Service Provides Model for Lean Government

It would be easy to point out how non-Lean the U.S. government has been at city, state and federal levels these last few weeks. We've seen examples of lack of decision making, poor logistics, lack of alignment of goals, poor communication between functional areas and poor planning to name just more>>

Effective ERP Implementation

I recently read about a Japanese company called OKI Electronics that went through implementing a new ERP system. They had a few good rules that I thought were quite smart and something I think all of us can learn from. ERP Implementations - we all hear of nightmares trying to more>>

Wipro Studies TPS to Achieve Lean Transactions

I'm very excited about an article in Business Week titled "Taking a Page from Toyota's Playbook" on how Indian info tech companies are adopting the Toyota model. As an example, Wipro visited a Toyota factory to study TPS, concluding "The goal for Wipro is to become the Toyota of business more>>

Lean U.S. Presidential Candidate for 2008

I would like to make an early conditional endorsement for U.S. President for 2008; Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. A recent article in the Atlantic Monthly magazine profiling Governor Romney's as a potential candidate touched on his commitment to Lean government - cutting out waste and patronage from government in his more>>

Walls & Cubicles: Waste Multipliers in the Office

The key to Lean in the office is good information flow. In fact, all Kaizen activities done in the office should have this as their primary goal. One key factor we use in determining how Lean an office is (and if we can help them) is the height of cubicle more>>

The Four Elements for Sustaining Kaizen

One of the most frequent questions we encounter form our customers and prospects is the issue of how to sustain the gains made through kaizen and other continuous improvement efforts. In a recent discussion among our consultants, we came to the agreement that the three traditional answers were inadequate and more>>

The Trap of Managing by Computer Screens

One of the things that I notice when I go to offices in the US is walls everywhere and a computer screen at each desk. I recently lead a group of clients to Japan to visit a Toyota group company office that had taken the principles of Lean and applied more>>

Product Development Performance Metrics

On our Japan Kaikaku Experience trip in August, we visited Omron, a manufacturer of sensors and factory automation products. They have been implementing TPS step by step and they are very Lean in the factory. They have relocated their Product Development team to the same campus as their production team more>>

Extreme Programming & the Lean Office

Extreme Programming is an approach to software programming that puts two or more people in a team to work on one piece of code, at the same time, on the same computer. It might seem counterproductive to have two sets of hands and brains working on one computer, but in more>>

Lean Fundamental: Do Today's Work Today

Recent examples from clients struggling with non-Lean scheduling methods reminded me of the importance of a fundamental principle of Lean - "do today's work today". This means no late deliveries, capacity equal to demand, and no overproduction. It's really a basic philosophy of business but it's harder than it seems. more>>

Sustaining Results in the Lean Office

During a recent Lean Office seminar, audience members were interested in the question of how to sustain office kaizen results. As in any type of kaizen, a lot of things have to go right before results achieved during one week of intense improvement activity will sustain over the long haul. more>>

Lean Customer Service

There's an often-cited Harvard Business Review statistic that goes something like "Developing a new client relationship costs between six to eight times more than maintaining an existing relationship". Spending six times more on customer retention does not sound Lean. For review, Lean can be boiled down to three rules: #1: more>>

Questions from the Field #3: Lean Engineering

And the third question on Lean applied to engineering... 3) When a process is very detailed, what is the best way to map the process so that it does not get too complicated with too much detail? There is detail and there is complexity. Detail means that there are many more>>

Questions from the Field #2: Lean Engineering

Second in the series of questions on implementing Lean in engineering... 2) How do we run to a variable Takt time, and are there other ways to pace or level load work flow? If Takt time varies due to variation in demand, there are several things you can do to more>>

Questions from the Field #1: Lean Engineering

We received several good questions from a manager of System and Process Improvement attempting to do kaizen in engineering. She saw the tremendous wastes (Lean opportunities) in the engineering department, but was having limited success getting the engineers to adopt Lean thinking. Some of here challenges include: Question #1: How more>>

Be Careful What You Measure, You Just Might Improve It

A continuous improvement manager at a mortgage processing firm told us how their Risk Assessment team was struggling. Their sales force consists of mortgage brokers who are independent, and their job is to sign up people looking for loans. There is a hand off to Risk Assessment for review. The more>>

Attacking Waste in Knowledge Work

There are 7 types of waste, according to Taiichi Ohno. Attacking these 7 wastes is what makes a company Lean and able to create more value faster. This is also true in the office. Most waste in the factory is easy to spot. Things such as inventory, motion, and defects more>>