Kaizen

I am halfway through reading, what I consider (thus far), an important lean book.

Lean Enterprise Institute (LEI) will be hosting its first Fall 2013 session. The session, comprised of 13 workshops, will be held in Minneapolis from September 17th through 20th and will focus, "on such fundamental concepts as standardized work, leader standard work, kaizen (both daily improvement and team-based rapid improvement events), visual management and value-stream mapping in the context of organizational change and learning."

I was recently working in Indonesia at one of the largest pulp and paper mills in the world. One evening we were invited to the company's continuous improvement awards ceremony.

On a quarterly basis they recognize kaizen teams that have excelled.

I see the same cycle in so many places.

What cycle?

This one, more or less:

Step 1. Altruistic leaders sincerely (?) ask the associates for their improvement ideas (a.k.a. suggestions, kaizens, CI’s, etc.) in an attempt to foment some daily kaizen.

Step 2. Associates (not all of them), somewhat skeptically, call leadership’s bluff and submit their ideas.

Last month, I teamed up with Gemba Academy's Ron Pereira and presented a two-part webinar on the subject of

Several weeks ago, I reviewed Dan Markovitz's excellent new book, A Factory of One: Applying Lean Principles to Banish Waste and Improve Your Personal Performance. I also took Dan's work as a call to personal action.

During a recent trip to the great state of Texas, I heard some down-home wisdom, “Before you season your food, why don’t

Along with hundreds of thousands of folks in the Northeast, I am in my 6th day without po

I just contributed a guest post of the same title to Christian Paulsen's Lean Leadership blog. Please visit his site to read my full post and to take in some of Chris' excellent lean content. Chris shared some of his insight with us a while back in his Gemba Tales guest post, 5 Reasons You Need to Do a DMAIC.

Ok, it's really aerial photography with a lean application.