The Human Side of the Kaizen Event - 11 Questions for Lean Leaders
Yesterday, Defense Industry Daily posted the first half of an article which I co-wrote with Chuck Wolfe, "Want an Effective Kaizen Event?
Yesterday, Defense Industry Daily posted the first half of an article which I co-wrote with Chuck Wolfe, "Want an Effective Kaizen Event?
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the renowned Hungarian psychology professor is noted for, among other things, his research on work and flow (continuous flow from the perspective of the worker being completel
Remember Angus MacGyver? He was the star of the old MacGyver TV series and used science and the inventive application of common items (gum wrappers, duct tape, etc. - kind of a one person moonshine shop) to solve desperate problems.
Recently, someone shared that a multi-national company with a good Lean pedigree was looking to rationalize their facilities so that each facility served only market "A" or market "B," but not both, like many do now. This makes very little sense, especially in light of the fact that the same value
The Kaizen Promotion Office (KPO) really has nothing to do with advertising or promotion in the traditional sense, but it does play a major role in any successful Lean transformation.
Lean thinking may not have been big in the first century, but there's at least one quote that can be applied to Lean, "...you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." So, in a Lean context how do you know the truth and how will it set you free?
Effective visual controls are, among other things, self-explaining. What does that mean? It means that someone with no inside knowledge of a process should be able to quickly understand the "system" without human assistance.
The best intentioned try to apply PDCA as well as SDCA (standardize-do-check-act), but often fall far short on the check side. Of course, this means that the likelihood they will act/adjust appropriately is slim.
During the 1970's and 1980's, Fram oil filters used to run TV ads that featured a mechanic with a rather dour look on his face.