Pascal Dennis: Sustaining focus & momentum requires effective connected checking — our organization’s nervous system By Pascal Dennis, Author of Getting The Right Things Done, Lean Production Simplified, and Andy & Me - Last updated: Monday, July 16, 2012

Good question & good reflections. I would add the following. Sustaining focus & momentum requires effective connected checking -- our organization's nervous system. We call it Level 1, 2, 3 checking, Level 1 being the front line. To Sammy's point, it's hard to beat daily asaichi at the front line, supported by leader STW checking what's important. But front line asaichi needs to be connected to Level 2 & Level 3. (Some problems are beyond the ...

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Jeff Liker: Self development leads to developing others By Jeff Liker, author of The Toyota Way and co-author of Toyota Product Development System and Toyota Under Fire - Last updated: Sunday, July 15, 2012

Based on your description I cannot tell what you have done in the 5 years, and know nothing about your processes.  As a general rule focusing on training people in visualizing, analyzing and solving problems is a great thing, particularly training managers.  In our new book on Developing Lean Leadership the Toyota Way we describe how to develop leaders and we are arguing that they need to be trained in ...

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Sammy Obara: You get what you inspect, not what you expect By Samuel Obara, Co-author of 'Toyota by Toyota: Reflections from the Inside Leaders on the Techniques That Revolutionized the Industry' - Last updated: Saturday, July 14, 2012

Ensuring a constant focus on lean efforts seems to be a current interest in many organizations. I believe that constant focus has always been a reward for constant inspection.   As manager Doug Jennings from NUMMI used to say, you get what you inspect, not what you expect. It would be very difficult if not impossible to keep the focus and momentum along the lean journey, if you don’t have a structure of ...

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Tracey Richardson: Involvement and engagement of people at their process(es) where the work is being done must be a priority By Tracey Richardson, - Last updated: Saturday, July 14, 2012

It's always music to my ears when I hear a company is willing to invest time in people development from the executives to the floor level of the organization.  I believe that the training of the concepts or values are just the beginning of the lean journey, the more difficult task is the sustainment, improvement and growth of leaders and their practices to ensure the company is doing business in a way that ...

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Klaus Petersen: How do we ensure a constant focus and momentum in our Lean transformation after these years and what are the pitfalls we must avoid ? By Klaus Peterson, Solar's Group process manager - Last updated: Saturday, July 14, 2012

Dan Jones: Managing Horizontally as well as Vertically By Daniel T Jones, Co-author of 'Lean Thinking' and 'The Machine That Changed the World' - Last updated: Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Silos are a symptom of a deeper problem in organisations. Getting rid of silos is not the answer to this problem. Traditional management systems organise expert knowledge into vertical functions and departments and use these to allocate resources across the organisation. So does Toyota. However following Toyota’s example, lean organisations also manage the flows of the work (or value streams) that create the value customers are paying for. This is ...

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Art Smalley: Toyota’s Functional Organization By Art Smalley, author of Creating Level Pull. Co-author of A3 Thinking and Kaizen Methods: Six Steps to Improvement - Last updated: Wednesday, June 27, 2012

I don’t have a very snappy answer with five insightful key points for the question posited this month. The question posed is a fairly common one and yet I fear that is potentially problematic in one regard. The question of “how do I…” (fill in the blank with most any topic) is actually referring to an action item that has been decided upon as a solution to a problem. For ...

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Mike Rother: Time for Mindset Change? By Mike Rother, Author of Toyota Kata and co-author of Learning to See - Last updated: Monday, June 25, 2012

Question: "What are the five major things we need to do to help us successfully transform a silo based organisation into one focused on business processes, and what are the biggest risks we need to look out for?" To change the silo focus you'll have to change people's mindset, which developed out of them having been led and managed a certain way. Habitual behaviors can be changed and there are a ...

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Jean Cunningham: Walk through the process By Jean Cunningham, Co-author of 'Real Numbers' and 'Easier, Simpler, Faster' - Last updated: Sunday, June 24, 2012

The first activity I would suggest is just walking a quote through until the order is completed, invoiced and recorded. Talk to the people about what their steps are.  Ask what they spend their time doing.  Ask how long it takes to do the main purpose (the value add) of the task, and then how long to do the task overall.   Ask which parts of the task are done in the IT system and what ...

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Michael Ballé: Don’t reorganize! Learn to pull instead By Michael Balle, co-author of The Gold Mine and The Lean Manager - Last updated: Sunday, June 24, 2012

Full disclosure : I wrote a book on re-engineering almost 20 years ago and I wish there was a recall procedure for published books :). As the book was put on the shelves I had reached the conclusion from evidence that a re-engineering project would stop the company working for about two years as every one tried to figure out their role and play musical chairs and the new “re-engineered” organization ...

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Tracey Richardson: Without work standards there can be no kaizens By Tracey Richardson, - Last updated: Saturday, June 23, 2012

This is a very interesting and complex question but one Im drawn to answer based on my experiences at Toyota on the production floor, a current instructor at Toyota, and as a consultant over the past 14 years.  I've had the opportunity to be very close to this situation with a couple of my clients who could be categorized as silo based organizations. It's difficult at times to have a linear ...

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Jeff Liker: Changing the structure doesn’t change the work – don’t reorganize, teach teamwork By Jeff Liker, author of The Toyota Way and co-author of Toyota Product Development System and Toyota Under Fire - Last updated: Saturday, June 23, 2012

I often think that questions like this suggest a misunderstanding of the problem.  Simply stating the problem is we have silos and we want to turn the organization sideways to focus on business processes is not a  good problem statement.   Presumably there is a process that cuts across silos and the silos need to work together to solve specific problems to achieve specific objectives. The reason they currently do not ...

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Klaus Petersen: From silo based-organization to business processes? By Klaus Peterson, Solar's Group process manager - Last updated: Saturday, June 23, 2012

Michael Ballé: Work standards are both individual and collective By Michael Balle, co-author of The Gold Mine and The Lean Manager - Last updated: Saturday, June 23, 2012

I was in a plant this week where assembly operators filmed each other and compared how they work on the same station stopwatch in hand, and get to an agreement on the standard way to build a specific part. On most aspects they agreed there was a “best way” in the stopwatch sense, on some they agreed to disagree as each individually preferred to do this gesture this way or ...

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Standardization, or high agreement By Jamie Flinchbaugh, Co-Author of The Hitchhiker's Guide To Lean and co-founder of the Lean Learning Center - Last updated: Sunday, June 17, 2012

The question asked is "Are work standards individual or collective?" Standardization is a very difficult topic for most people in lean. The difficulty starts with a past practice and perception that standards are something we give people to force them to do work in a way that might not even be the most productive. Because of this, the perception of standardization is often far from its intention. Our preference is ...

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Art Smalley: Standardized Confusion By Art Smalley, author of Creating Level Pull. Co-author of A3 Thinking and Kaizen Methods: Six Steps to Improvement - Last updated: Sunday, June 10, 2012

If I had five dollars for every question I ever had to answer about Standardized Work or Standards inside of Toyota I’d be a very wealthy and retired individual! Seemingly this topic and associated themes pertaining to standards should be easy but that is not the case in reality. There is more than meets the eye with this topic and that is what I suspect is lurking behind the scenes ...

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Tracey Richardson: We all individually had standards we followed as well as the team collectively and upward By Tracey Richardson, - Last updated: Tuesday, June 5, 2012

I think from my 10 years at Toyota (TMMK) standards were the basis for everything we did, including 5S.   It really was the key to our success and the infrastructure for the culture.  Having the unique opportunity to be a team member, team leader and group leader within the company it was important to understand that we all individually had standards we followed as well as the team collectively and ...

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Sammy Obara: It depends on how many people you really need to make the effort on this specific improvement to take place with its adequate adjustment of standards. By Samuel Obara, Co-author of 'Toyota by Toyota: Reflections from the Inside Leaders on the Techniques That Revolutionized the Industry' - Last updated: Sunday, June 3, 2012

Maybe the core question ends up being:  whose role is it to improve? The question seems too simple now: When we say we are improving specifically the "standards", and if by that we mean improving standardized work and its three documents, then very often that is done by a team as small as 2 people, the team member and his supervisor (or many times a process engineer), who can document, do time taking, record steps on ...

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Jean Cunningham: Standard work is the best way that is currently know to do the work By Jean Cunningham, Co-author of 'Real Numbers' and 'Easier, Simpler, Faster' - Last updated: Thursday, May 31, 2012

Standard work is the best way that is currently know to do the work.  As decided by the people who do the work.  To get the best possible standards, the people doing the work might have involved customers and suppliers of their work to better understand what is needed.   The standard will evolve over time as the work content changes, the understanding of waste improves, and the supplier and customer needs change.   The real question I ...

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Jeff Liker: Standards might stem from an individual’s suggestion or it could be the result of a group discussion By Jeff Liker, author of The Toyota Way and co-author of Toyota Product Development System and Toyota Under Fire - Last updated: Wednesday, May 30, 2012

In the Toyota Way the purpose of standardized work, or any standards for that matter, is to provide a baseline for kaizen.  If 5 people do the job differently than any individual with an idea will only apply the idea to her own work.  The individual will learn something, but the group will not.  In order for a group to learn they have to agree on a standard and then ...

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Cécile Roche: Are work standards individual or collective? By Cécile Roche, Thales LEAN Director - Probasis - Last updated: Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Art Smalley: Performance Organizations By Art Smalley, author of Creating Level Pull. Co-author of A3 Thinking and Kaizen Methods: Six Steps to Improvement - Last updated: Wednesday, April 11, 2012

This month's questions asks why is there such a resistance to creating learning organizations and why are leaders letting the future deteriorate without doing anything about it. I am not sure that I can answer the question with any relevant facts to be honest. In order to answer this question properly I think the proper thing to do in TPS spirit is to "get the facts" and proceed from that ...

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Sammy Obara: PDCA is the missing element By Samuel Obara, Co-author of 'Toyota by Toyota: Reflections from the Inside Leaders on the Techniques That Revolutionized the Industry' - Last updated: Tuesday, April 10, 2012

I'm not sure we are not doing anything about it.  But perhaps what we are doing is not working.  Perhaps the PDCA element is missing. As people say, the problems of today are all solutions from yesterday. One example is the home ownership catastrophe.  Smart people created several avenues to allow millions of people to buy their own home.   Home ownership was solved for people who otherwise would never afford to buy those much-more-than-I-can-afford-mansions.  Those smart ...

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Michael Ballé: Where is the blueprint for a manager who wants to create a learning organization? By Michael Balle, co-author of The Gold Mine and The Lean Manager - Last updated: Monday, April 9, 2012

Learning is hard. Particularly in adults, learning requires a determination to learn. This means controlling one’s intuitive “first response.” Learning requires what is called “frame control”, which is a mindfulness about our mental models and knowing how to actively play fit-to-fact with new info or situations. Grown up minds are simply not designed for learning as we know what we know, and believe what we believe. In other words, first “what ...

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Jeff Liker: We look at single variable explanations in isolation to get us the quick fix By Jeff Liker, author of The Toyota Way and co-author of Toyota Product Development System and Toyota Under Fire - Last updated: Monday, April 9, 2012

The best way I can explain this is with an analogy to physical health.  We know what it takes to be healthy--exercise and eating right.  Yet America, as the wealthiest in the world, is one of the unhealthiest.  Obesity runs rampant and the large majority of Americans are overweight and out of shape.  We could ask the same question.  Why are we letting our future deteriorate without doing anything about ...

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Pascal Dennis: Our business & professional schools teach us to think in a way inimical to learning By Pascal Dennis, Author of Getting The Right Things Done, Lean Production Simplified, and Andy & Me - Last updated: Monday, April 9, 2012

Why Are Learning Organizations So Scarce? A billion dollar question... There are many root causes, which my Lean Edge colleagues will no doubt explore at length. Here's one that I find compelling: Our business & professional schools teach us to think in a way inimical to learning. Here are some of the mental models I picked up at engineering and business schools: 1) We are very smart and successful 2) We can manage from a distance, by the numbers. Corollary: What ...

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Craig Kennedy: Why is there such resistance to creating learning organizations? By Craig Kennedy, Vice President, North American Operations at Merck Manufacturing Division - Last updated: Monday, April 9, 2012

Sammy Obara: A good leader will show the way, a lean leader will have the follower find it By Samuel Obara, Co-author of 'Toyota by Toyota: Reflections from the Inside Leaders on the Techniques That Revolutionized the Industry' - Last updated: Thursday, March 29, 2012

I think the ability to influence other people and the skills needed to do so would be somewhat similar to both types of leaders, provided they are both good leaders. Perhaps a distinguishing trait between the two leaders can be perceived by observing how they interact with their followers.    While the lean leader will frequently challenge their followers beliefs and paradigms, the good traditional one will put a lot of weight in the praise and motivation. Maybe ...

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Dan Markovitz: A lean leader achieves objectives by developing workers’ capabilities to deliver those results By Daniel Markovitz, Author of “A Factory of One" - Last updated: Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Leaders are lauded for delivering results. Wall Street in particular prizes predictability above all. But reaching goals or benchmarks doesn’t speak to the sustainability of the accomplishment. “Chainsaw” Al Dunlop fired people at Sunbeam (and other companies he “led”) left and right on his way towards reaching profit targets. Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling of Enron cooked the books to hit its numbers. In neither case were the results sustainable. By ...

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Peter Handlinger: To fully and deeply commit to the PDCA cycle, all day, every day By Peter Handlinger, Co-author of "The One Page Report...Of Course" - Last updated: Sunday, March 25, 2012

If you had to force a one liner statement from me in answer to the above question I guess it would have to be “To fully and deeply commit to the PDCA cycle, all day, every day”. But what does this mean practically in terms of behaviour and results? Some very clear guidelines have been offered in the previous sections. Also, many references to Toyota have been made and, having spent ...

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Michael Ballé: Lean leaders make people before they make parts By Michael Balle, co-author of The Gold Mine and The Lean Manager - Last updated: Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Management is essentially about getting people to do what you want them to do, like having an extra pair of arms to implement your ideas, whereas leadership is about getting people to fight your battles for you. These are two very different approaches to any organizational role. In that sense, whether lean or not, leadership is about how you interpret your job, and then how successful you are at doing ...

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Mike Rother: Toyota Teaches its Leaders By Mike Rother, Author of Toyota Kata and co-author of Learning to See - Last updated: Sunday, March 11, 2012

Question:  What distinguishes a Lean leader from a very good traditional leader, in behaviour and results? I think there's little difference between a good Lean leader and a good traditional leader. Both want to transcend themselves. What we may actually be asking here is why does Toyota seem to have a disproportionate number of them? One factor is the way Toyota leaders acquire their leadership ability. Traditionally we try to select ...

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Art Smalley: Sorry, no buzz word By Art Smalley, author of Creating Level Pull. Co-author of A3 Thinking and Kaizen Methods: Six Steps to Improvement - Last updated: Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Sorry but in all honesty I am not a fan of providing “sound bite” sized answers to complex questions. I fear these short so-called answers or buzz words often do far more harm than good and don’t advance the state of lean thinking very much. I believe that hard questions deserve some hard thinking and reflection. If Lean Leadership could be reduced to a catchy phrase or a basic formula ...

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Jean Cunningham: A lean leader celebrates disclosing problems and other people’s abilities to solve them By Jean Cunningham, Co-author of 'Real Numbers' and 'Easier, Simpler, Faster' - Last updated: Saturday, March 3, 2012

A lean leader celebrates disclosing problems. A lean leader celebrates other people's abilities to solve problems. A lean leader follows standard work themselves and expect it from everyone in the team.   A lean leader creates time for improvement and starts every meeting with "what have you improved since we last met?" A traditional leader celebrates good news.  A traditional leader promotes fire fighters. A traditional leader believes people have to be managed.  A traditional leader evaluates how ...

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Jim Huntzinger: Lean leaders spend the time developing the people with different knowledge, wisdom and experience to change and evolve the system and culture of the organization By Jim Huntzinger, Author of 'Lean Cost Management: Accounting for Lean by Establishing Flow' - Last updated: Saturday, March 3, 2012

To carry forward the points Jeff makes about differentiating between a lean leader and a traditional leader, we can also look at this from a systems view.  As Dr. Liker aptly describes a traditional leader with all the adjectives that we are familiar with; and often, these types of leaders do make changes with very good results. The longer term issue is these types of leaders rarely make the deep system ...

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Jeff Liker: A Lean Leader strengthens the business by developing people through coaching process improvement at the gemba By Jeff Liker, author of The Toyota Way and co-author of Toyota Product Development System and Toyota Under Fire - Last updated: Saturday, March 3, 2012

A Lean Leader strengthens the business by developing people through coaching process improvement at the gemba. When we think of a traditional leader with adjectives like charismatic, decisive, visionary, inspiring, tough, bold, and transformational.  This is a western interpretation of the leader as the individual who changes the game, turns the company around, makes the tough decisions, and gets results, results, results.  When we see results, and especially when we see ...

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Jan van Ginkel: What distinguishes a Lean leader from a very good, Traditional Leader, in behaviour and results, in one, clear statement? By Jan van Ginkel, Director Value Stream Management & Supply Chain Development at Sara Lee CoffeeTeaCo - Last updated: Saturday, March 3, 2012

Art Smalley: Satisfy the Customer in the Long Run for Sales and Profits By Art Smalley, author of Creating Level Pull. Co-author of A3 Thinking and Kaizen Methods: Six Steps to Improvement - Last updated: Sunday, February 26, 2012

I think we are falling into the trap of discussing “production tactics” as a root cause solution without really understanding the problem. Apologies in advance but I would have to back track first and clarify the situation in greater detail before I could answer the question. I will provide some context for what I mean and some thoughts on the short term and long term in terms of actions ...

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Dan Jones: Never Waste a Good Crisis By Daniel T Jones, Co-author of 'Lean Thinking' and 'The Machine That Changed the World' - Last updated: Friday, February 24, 2012

Falling sales always provokes deeper thinking about what it talks to survive. The starting point is to define the business problem behind these falling sales. Structural shifts often coincide with cyclical downturns of the economy. For instance in the USA health insurance companies are now switching their patients to local district hospitals charging much lower rates. Big expensive teaching hospitals are struggling to adjust to this structural change, which is ...

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Michael Ballé: Takt time is a thinking device to combine flexibility and productivity By Michael Balle, co-author of The Gold Mine and The Lean Manager - Last updated: Thursday, February 23, 2012

As time goes by fact becomes legend and legend becomes myth. Takt time is one of the core concepts of lean, which origins are now misted in myth – uncertain and unknowable, but thought-provoking anyhow. Legend has it that Ohno hit upon Takt time thinking when trying to improve productivity. Toyota was assembling trucks for the US army, and Ohno realized they’d spent three weeks in the month getting all ...

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Mike Rother: What’s Your Strive Vector? By Mike Rother, Author of Toyota Kata and co-author of Learning to See - Last updated: Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Question:  Is there a lean way of dealing with falling sales? Conventional lean responses to falling sales -- like adjusting production to customer takt and giving rebates to help levelize demand -- reflect a view of Lean and Continuous Improvement that will be too narrow for sustained competitiveness. We tend to apply Lean inside our comfort zone, honing our existing ways of doing something. Unfortunately, if we don't also establish challenging target ...

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Jeff Liker: You must balance the principle of “build to takt” with the principle of “heijunka,” and the principle of “respect for people.” By Jeff Liker, author of The Toyota Way and co-author of Toyota Product Development System and Toyota Under Fire - Last updated: Tuesday, February 7, 2012

I appreciate this question from Jean-Baptiste Bouthillon who himself has become a serious student of lean and had to make decisions like this for his construction company.  I will start with his assumption that "production must follow the takt of customer demand."  It is always dangerous to take an ideal principle and turn it into a prescriptive statement.  "The ideal is working to achieve production to takt" is different then ...

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Jean-Baptiste Bouthillon: how to follow Takt with falling sales? By Jean-Baptiste Bouthillon, PDG de PO Construction - Last updated: Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Art Smalley: Evaluating Executive Performance By Art Smalley, author of Creating Level Pull. Co-author of A3 Thinking and Kaizen Methods: Six Steps to Improvement - Last updated: Tuesday, January 24, 2012

 Let’s consider answering this question in reverse for some contrast in terms of discussion. In other words what is the wrong way to evaluate executive performance? For starters as has been mentioned I don’t think you can just focus on results especially financial ones although of course they are very important. Many factors outside of direct executive control affect financial performance. Often a rising tide lifts all boats and simply ...

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Dan Jones: Assess along purpose (results), process (means), people (learning) framework of a lean management system By Daniel T Jones, Co-author of 'Lean Thinking' and 'The Machine That Changed the World' - Last updated: Sunday, January 22, 2012

Lean adds new perspectives to the traditional ways of assessing executive performance, namely Results and People skills, and adds a third process or value stream dimension. These mirror the purpose (results), process (means), people (learning) framework of a lean management system. The lean logic behind this is that you need knowledgeable people running tightly integrated end-to-end value streams and projects to deliver results that will be sustained. In other words, ...

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Michael Ballé: Evaluate efforts to improve performance indicators and develop self-competencies By Michael Balle, co-author of The Gold Mine and The Lean Manager - Last updated: Saturday, December 17, 2011

What an interesting question! And difficult to answer, as every organization has its own traditions and practices on the topic. If we’re talking evaluation and not incentive, the one thing I’ve learned the hard way in lean transformations is that you can’t simply focus on results because you’ll tend to give the hardest projects to some of your best guys. If a hospital evaluates its obstetricians on complications at childbirth, ...

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Jeff Liker: What are they trying to achieve, what is the process to get there, what concrete actions are they taking By Jeff Liker, author of The Toyota Way and co-author of Toyota Product Development System and Toyota Under Fire - Last updated: Saturday, December 17, 2011

The obvious answer is that it depends.  Any of us who have had Japanese sensei had heard that a lot.  So what does it depend on.  First, it depends one the strategic business purpose of the organization--external.  Second, it depends on the organization's goals for people and culture development-internal.  Third, it depends on the current maturity of the organization to meet the business objectives.  In other words I would want ...

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Eric Buehrens: What is the right lean way to evaluate executive performance? By Eric Buehrens, Chief Operating Officer, Harvard Medical School, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, USA - Last updated: Friday, December 16, 2011

Dan Jones: How can lean survive By Daniel T Jones, Co-author of 'Lean Thinking' and 'The Machine That Changed the World' - Last updated: Tuesday, November 29, 2011

The best chance for lean to survive a change in top management is if it is seen to be delivering significant results, not just point improvements in key processes but bottom-line results for the organisation as a whole, which would be reversed if support for lean disappeared. Top management may be instrumental in leading the lean actions that deliver these results, but they are often led by managers lower down the ...

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Michael Ballé: Lean is a CEO practice to improve performance By Michael Balle, co-author of The Gold Mine and The Lean Manager - Last updated: Wednesday, November 23, 2011

The first thing his sensei told my father when they started working together was that the great weakness of TPS was that it rested entirely on the plant managers. Years later, this statement turns out to be confirmed, time and time again. If there’s one thing we’ve learned is that lean is a practice – and well, a practice. I’ve been discussing this issue with other CEOs and one different way ...

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Pascal Dennis: How do we continue to learn after current leaders move on? By Pascal Dennis, Author of Getting The Right Things Done, Lean Production Simplified, and Andy & Me - Last updated: Thursday, November 10, 2011

Good insights from Steve, Mike et al -- thanks. Here are my thoughts, for posting. How Does Lean Survive a Change in Top Management? Succession planning is indeed the key, but perhaps not in the conventional sense. As Mike suggest Lean thinking entails meta-cognition. Meta-cognition entails 'knowing about knowing' and answering questions like: How do I learn? What do I know? What do I know well? What do I not know very well? Great leaders tend to know themselves thereby, and ...

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Preparing for the inevitable change in leadership By Jamie Flinchbaugh, Co-Author of The Hitchhiker's Guide To Lean and co-founder of the Lean Learning Center - Last updated: Sunday, November 6, 2011

Until someone finds the Fountain of Youth, leadership changes in organizations are inevitable. Large corporations and small family-owned businesses all have to deal with it. But sometimes they appear to occur at the wrong time. Just as your lean journey appears to have some momentum, all of a sudden the leadership changes. The leadership change might be at a plant level, an executive level, or the CEO themselves. In any ...

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Jeff Liker: Developing the next generation of leaders By Jeff Liker, author of The Toyota Way and co-author of Toyota Product Development System and Toyota Under Fire - Last updated: Wednesday, November 2, 2011

As Steve pointed out succession planning is the key, except that succession planning means different things in different organizational contexts.  Many large companies pride themselves on succession planning and have elaborate IT systems and human resources has developed formal career paths.  In a lean organization, if Toyota is any guide, these types of systems are only superficial for screening.  One of the problems with trying to transform a traditional organization ...

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Steve Spear: How do you select the next CEO for continuity in excellence? By Steven Spear, Author of 'The High-Velocity Edge' and 'Chasing the Rabbit' - Last updated: Wednesday, November 2, 2011

The inability to maintain continuity with a firm's efforts around continuous improvement, operational excellence, and broad based product and process innovation has to be tied, in part at least, to poor succession planning and process. Be it the CEO or board, there must be some criteria of critical skills and capabilities that leadership candidates must posses to be deemed likely at success.  One couldn't imagine a contender who either lacked some ...

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Pierre Vareille: How can lean survive a change in top management? By Pierre Vareille, Chairman and CEO of FCI - Last updated: Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Art Smalley: Toyota’s True North Concept By Art Smalley, author of Creating Level Pull. Co-author of A3 Thinking and Kaizen Methods: Six Steps to Improvement - Last updated: Tuesday, November 1, 2011

There are several points raised in this month's question about the concept of True North in Lean Thinking. First what is its role, second how can we define the concept, third in what way does it contribute to lean results, and fourth can lean be done without True North? I'll give my perspective on these topics one by one in the paragraphs below. True North is one of the common buzzwords ...

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Michael Ballé: True North is key because building capability feels like failure on the spot By Michael Balle, co-author of The Gold Mine and The Lean Manager - Last updated: Monday, October 31, 2011

“You’re the problem” told the Toyota coordinator to the shop manager when the latter complained about the level of the operators he had to work with. It took the manager a full year to understand what the sensei meant, and come back with “okay, I’m the problem – not the operators. What should I do?” His sensei then got him to start a training dojo. It took that manager a year ...

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Mike Rother: A Vision is Necessary, but Not Enough By Mike Rother, Author of Toyota Kata and co-author of Learning to See - Last updated: Sunday, October 9, 2011

Question: What would you say is the role of True North in Lean Thinking? For my answer, please click on the compass. (if you cannot see the compass, please paste the following URL into your internet browser: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mrother/Handbook/1-Direction.pdf )

True North: Find the gap to the ideal state to stretch yourself By Jeff Liker, author of The Toyota Way and co-author of Toyota Product Development System and Toyota Under Fire - Last updated: Sunday, October 9, 2011

"True North" is used quite a bit around Toyota, though the hard-core TPS folks do not like it preferring "ideal state."  Either concept has a similar meaning which is that you should understand the gap between the ideal and the actual so you can see how far you need to go.  Toyota Business Practices, which replaced practical problem solving, has an explicit step to define the ideal state.  Then the ...

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Pascal Dennis: Success is the ennemy of future success By Pascal Dennis, Author of Getting The Right Things Done, Lean Production Simplified, and Andy & Me - Last updated: Friday, September 23, 2011

Building on Steven's thoughts, True North entails developing a clear picture of a) Ideal condition, and b) Target condition. As Steven suggests, at the process level, this means answering questions like: "Is the process behaving as expected?" Corollaries: Do I understand my process?  Is our hypothesis sound?  If not, how do we adjust it? "Is there creative tension in our management process? Corollaries: Are problems visible?  Are we challenging ourselves or simply resting on our oars? True North works much the same ...

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Steve Spear: The True North “Ideal”: A source of tension for continuous improvement By Steven Spear, Author of 'The High-Velocity Edge' and 'Chasing the Rabbit' - Last updated: Wednesday, September 21, 2011

In Toyota thinking, there are at least two indicators that a problem is occurring that needs to be resolved. -- The first is a sign that the process is not in control and that the process is understood imperfectly. -- The second, the 'True North Ideal,' as we called it in "Decoding the DNA of the Toyota Production System," is a source of relentless tension for improvement and innovation--even when the system ...

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The Lean Edge: What is True North? By The Lean Edge, - Last updated: Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Dan Jones: Lean and Operational Excellence By Daniel T Jones, Co-author of 'Lean Thinking' and 'The Machine That Changed the World' - Last updated: Tuesday, September 13, 2011

It is a mistake to think of lean as just one of the many tools in the Operational Excellence portfolio. Operational Excellence is really a catch all label for many different "best practices". Lean on the other hand is a very specific set of interlocking practices, tools and behaviours derived from a very clear reference model. Lean grew out of years of practice and experimentation at Toyota and at companies ...

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Jeff Liker: Lean provides the “hows” to the pursuit of perfection By Jeff Liker, author of The Toyota Way and co-author of Toyota Product Development System and Toyota Under Fire - Last updated: Sunday, September 11, 2011

In our recent book, The Toyota Way to Continuous Improvement, we start the book by talking about the pursuit of excellence.  We came to the realization that talking about "leaning out processes" gives a mistaken image.  It is a mechanistic view of the world that gives the impression that lean is like going through a field with a weed whacker and cutting down the weeds.  Actually that is a good ...

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Michael Ballé: Lean is unique, lean is different By Michael Balle, co-author of The Gold Mine and The Lean Manager - Last updated: Thursday, July 21, 2011

This is the all or nothing question, so I’ll go all in! Lean is unique, lean is different. I have to confess I published four business books before specializing in lean. None of them very good, I fear. In youthful folly I believed in the value of reading the business books literature, cherry picking the best insights and trying to put it all together again, trusting that the assemblage would ...

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Mike Rother: Lean Can Be a Great Integrator By Mike Rother, Author of Toyota Kata and co-author of Learning to See - Last updated: Thursday, July 21, 2011

Question: Did the writers of books about Excellence and what makes great organizations get it right to begin with and does lean add anything new? Recently, as I was watching an improvement team working at a 3-person U-shaped assembly cell at an automotive supplier, I was reminded of the importance of lean-specific knowledge. The improvement team’s task was to distribute the assembly work among the three operators in the cell, i.e., to determine ...

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Pascal Dennis: Excellence books hit the spot but miss the gemba By Pascal Dennis, Author of Getting The Right Things Done, Lean Production Simplified, and Andy & Me - Last updated: Monday, July 11, 2011

In my view, the "Excellence" authors basically got it right.  (I continue to refer to them.) But the "Excellence" books are (necessarily) academic. The Lean movement has brought these ideas into the messy world of practice -- a great and continuing contribution. Imagine a messy changeover kaizen in an Indiana stamping plant.  The team stands glaring at you with their arms crossed. Can we cut changeover time in half?  Can we teach these jokers how to sustain & ...

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Mark Graban:”What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” Ecclesiastes 1:9 By Mark Graban, Author of the 'Lean Hospitals: Improving Quality, Patient Safety, and Employee Satisfaction,' winner of the Shingo Prize in 2009. Creator of leanblog.org, and Senior Fellow at the Lean Enterprise Institute. On twitter as @leanblog. - Last updated: Friday, July 8, 2011

I sometimes hear people say that lean concepts and philosophies are just a restatement of Dr. Deming's teachings or it's all copied from Henry Ford or it has been lifted from Benjamin Franklin. But it could be argued that each new "restatement" leads to incrementally improved definitions and understandings of core principles from the past. One hospital laboratory director I worked with had been studying Peter Senge's "The Fifth Discipline" ...

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The Lean Edge: Did the writers of books about excellence and what makes great organizations get it right to begin with and does lean add anything new? By The Lean Edge, - Last updated: Friday, July 8, 2011

Jeff Liker: Dispel the myth of “lean will not work here” By Jeff Liker, author of The Toyota Way and co-author of Toyota Product Development System and Toyota Under Fire - Last updated: Friday, July 8, 2011

In our newest book,  The Toyota Way to Continuous Improvement, the bulk are seven case studies of organizations very different from auto--health care, iron ore mining, heavy machinery, nuclear submarine overhaul and repair,  product development, nuclear fuel, and more.  Each tells the story from the sensei perspective of the process they went through to help the organization understand lean and develop the skills to make significant improvement.  Success ranged from ...

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Dave Brunt: What are the most difficult industries and activities to introduce lean to and why? In your experience, where have you found lean most difficult to introduce? What specific barriers have you come across? How have you overcome them? By Dave Brunt, Co-author of "Creating Lean Dealers" - Last updated: Wednesday, July 6, 2011

There is no doubt that there are many challenges that we face when we introduce lean - in fact we can come up with lots of examples in all the Ms - Man/Woman, Method, Machines, Materials, Measurements etc. However the lean community can cite examples that span economic sectors and different countries - varying from exemplar organisations outperforming their industry through to good isolated examples in business units. Given that ...

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Jamie Flinchbaugh: “Lean won’t work in MY field” By Jamie Flinchbaugh, Co-Author of The Hitchhiker's Guide To Lean and co-founder of the Lean Learning Center - Last updated: Monday, June 27, 2011

What is the hardest field to apply lean? It doesn't seem to matter what field you're in, they all think theirs is the hardest. And they can back it up with evidence. One of the most frequent questions I get is "who else in my industry is doing lean?", because no one wants to be first, and no one wants to be last. There is a wide range of answers to ...

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Dan Jones: Who struggles more with lean By Daniel T Jones, Co-author of 'Lean Thinking' and 'The Machine That Changed the World' - Last updated: Saturday, June 25, 2011

I remember two distinguished CEOs from the auto industry telling me that it was impossible to get their sales and marketing people to go lean. Although my colleague Dave Brunt and I have never given up this quest they have a point. In our experience the hardest people to convince are those whose natural temperament is doing deals, the traders and negotiators who are always looking forward to the next ...

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Pascal Dennis: Engaging the public sector in improvement is vital to the national interest By Pascal Dennis, Author of Getting The Right Things Done, Lean Production Simplified, and Andy & Me - Last updated: Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Like Art, I've found government to be the most challenging environment for Lean thinking. Root cause: the customer usually has no alternative provider & therefore can be ignored -- (sadly, but more or less safely). In my experience, government workers span the gamut of capability & engagement. Some are terrific & would excel in any environment. Others simply don't care.  The attitude of the latter seems to be, "Where you gonna go...?" But engaging the public sector in improvement ...

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Michael Ballé: The boardroom is hard to convince, because it needs learning both lean and finance By Michael Balle, co-author of The Gold Mine and The Lean Manager - Last updated: Tuesday, June 21, 2011

At the latest lean conference in Paris one of the presenters was the producer of French TV’s most successful sitcom. We learned that what makes a sitcom work is the consistency of the characters. Since many authors work on sequential episodes, if there are many episodes between the one you’re currently writing and the last one showing, chances are character affecting events will have happened in the episodes still on ...

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Mike Rother: Whoever Experiments Fastest, Wins By Mike Rother, Author of Toyota Kata and co-author of Learning to See - Last updated: Sunday, June 19, 2011

Question: What are the most difficult industries and activities to introduce lean to and why? Here’s a thought: The more similar a company’s business is to Toyota’s, the more it can try to copy and implement Toyota’s visible tools rather than practicing and developing the PDCA skill that is essential to Lean. PDCA = the scientific method. Scientists know we often advance to new solutions and levels of performance through disproof. ...

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Art Smalley: Lean Government By Art Smalley, author of Creating Level Pull. Co-author of A3 Thinking and Kaizen Methods: Six Steps to Improvement - Last updated: Friday, June 17, 2011

In response to this month's question the phrase “Lean Government” is something I think we will start to hear more of over the next few years and many no doubt will chuckle at the term as oxymoronic in nature. With deficits are large as they are in the United States and other countries budgetary cutbacks are inevitable. When forced into doing the same amount of work (or more) with fewer ...

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Steve Spear: Healthcare is least likely to benefit from lean or any other operational excellence approach because healthcare professionals are not trained to think systematically about systems By Steven Spear, Author of 'The High-Velocity Edge' and 'Chasing the Rabbit' - Last updated: Friday, June 17, 2011

Healthcare is the sector least likely to achieve process excellence with any meaningful breadth or speed because of three key impediments, one internal to healthcare,  one about the environment in which healthcare organizations operate, and one about the way in which ideas about process excellence are presented. Internal Problem: Training in Functions without Systems Thinking The internal problem is that healthcare professionals are trained, promoted, and evaluated in narrowly defined functional specialties--specialties ...

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The Lean Edge: What are the most difficult industries and activities to introduce lean to and why? By The Lean Edge, - Last updated: Friday, June 17, 2011

Dan Jones: How to Judge the Success of Lean? By Daniel T Jones, Co-author of 'Lean Thinking' and 'The Machine That Changed the World' - Last updated: Friday, June 17, 2011

Lean is a journey and to my mind the best way of judging success is by how much people have learnt so far and how ready they are to take the next leg of the journey. I often meet people who tell me that “Lean has changed their lives”. While this certainly makes writing books worthwhile it also presents an opportunity to ask some probing questions. Can they show me how ...

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Art Smalley: Lean Success By Art Smalley, author of Creating Level Pull. Co-author of A3 Thinking and Kaizen Methods: Six Steps to Improvement - Last updated: Tuesday, May 31, 2011

We have discussed the topic of why so few companies really show substantial progress when it comes to lean implementation quite a few times on this web site. I won't rehash all those topics in detail since they are available for those interested in a variety of different posts by different authors. For the last decade or more I have been lamenting about this topic in speeches, articles, interviews, and ...

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Michael Ballé: Lean is an attitude By Michael Balle, co-author of The Gold Mine and The Lean Manager - Last updated: Sunday, May 29, 2011

I’ve now lived through several heartbreaking cases where the chief executive of a lean company or division leaves (retires, company gets purchased, etc.) and all lean gains are lost in six to twelve months, sometimes faster. The company reverts more or less where it was before the lean transformation took off, sometimes worth. If this serves to show something, is that lean is a management method. Compared to that there are ...

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Jamie Flinchbaugh: How would you measure lean success? By Jamie Flinchbaugh, Co-Author of The Hitchhiker's Guide To Lean and co-founder of the Lean Learning Center - Last updated: Sunday, May 29, 2011

The question asked was "what counts as 'lean success'?" Albert Einstein once said: Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts. I see most people making mistakes when trying to evaluate success. They try to measure lean success as if it is a program. What's the easiest way to measure a program? Activity! Yet we should not confuse activity with productivity. Lean programs are measured by ...

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Mike Rother: How to Measure Lean Success By Mike Rother, Author of Toyota Kata and co-author of Learning to See - Last updated: Saturday, May 28, 2011

Question: How would you define lean success? Manufacturers have made many improvements in quality and productivity. There’s no question that our factories are better than they were 20 years ago, and that significant progress toward world-class manufacturing status has been made. But the world doesn’t stand still. A question for me is how organizations can keep improving and adapting - systematically - along unpredictable paths, as a part of what ...

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Jean Cunningham: Learn lean and have fun! By Jean Cunningham, Co-author of 'Real Numbers' and 'Easier, Simpler, Faster' - Last updated: Friday, May 27, 2011

Any change takes thought leaders and when others see great results they will follow.   Unfortunately we often do not know what to look for in terms of results, or we are too far from the action to see results other than in a report out or meeting notes. Another risk is having the initial launching efforts so diffused that there is activity all over, but no real point of focus to demonstrate success. The third risk is ...

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Jeff Liker: there is no end point to lean success, only transformation leading to increased performance By Jeff Liker, author of The Toyota Way and co-author of Toyota Product Development System and Toyota Under Fire - Last updated: Friday, May 27, 2011

Great question!  We thought we might sneak in over the fence unnoticed with that one.  The reality is an Industry Week survey like that one, that purportedly measures achievement of results, is purely subjective and depends highly on what the "anticipated results" are as the question suggests.  It tells us little about the actual success of the lean programs.  We were using it as it was one easy to understand ...

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The Lean Edge: what counts as “lean success”? By The Lean Edge, - Last updated: Friday, May 27, 2011

Dan Jones: Lean problem solving and teamwork By Daniel T Jones, Co-author of 'Lean Thinking' and 'The Machine That Changed the World' - Last updated: Friday, May 27, 2011

There is more to problem solving and teamwork in a lean organisation. This was brought home last week during another Gemba walk through a plant making fast moving consumer goods. As we snaked our way past a maze of hoppers, ovens, pipes and packaging lines it became clear than nothing was visible at all, to me or to the managers accompanying me. I kept asking what was today's plan, were ...

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Michael Ballé: Individual responsibility to solve problems with colleagues from other fucntions By Michael Balle, co-author of The Gold Mine and The Lean Manager - Last updated: Friday, May 13, 2011

As I understand it, teamwork has a specific meaning within TPS: it’s about individual development through solving problems with others across functions. So, on the one hand, individual responsibility remains (one problem is owned by one person), but on the other this person cannot solve the problem alone but must collaborate with colleagues, and more specifically, colleagues from other functions. Interestingly, this definition doesn’t refer to “team building” – there is ...

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Jim Huntzinger: Be Like Coach – What underlies the Team By Jim Huntzinger, Author of 'Lean Cost Management: Accounting for Lean by Establishing Flow' - Last updated: Friday, May 13, 2011

I believe Pascal really hits the point well.  I also love his Coach Wooden reference so I will reference Coach as well.  The underlying principle and practice is the focus on developing the individual as a precursor to developing the team.  You cannot have a strong team without strong (well –developed) individuals – or, at least, cannot sustain any reasonable level of teamwork without well-developed members.  This was the objective ...

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Pascal Dennis: Team members have clearly defined & interconnected roles, which in turn, depends on shared purpose By Pascal Dennis, Author of Getting The Right Things Done, Lean Production Simplified, and Andy & Me - Last updated: Tuesday, May 10, 2011

What is teamwork? In my view, a team is an organized group of people with a clearly defined goal. "Organized" means team members have clearly defined & interconnected roles -- which in turn, depends on shared purpose. In the absence of latter, our discourse inevitably devolves into random opinions, factoids and, often, recrimination. "If only those bozos in... would do their jobs!" Shared purpose shifts our thinking to: "Just how are we going to achieve that objective?" (Or "target condition" ...

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Mike Rother: What is Lean Teamwork? By Mike Rother, Author of Toyota Kata and co-author of Learning to See - Last updated: Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Question:  Lean focuses on individual problem solving, yet stresses the importance of teamwork. What would be your definition of teamwork in the lean sense? (Who says Lean focuses on “individual problem solving”?! I’ve never seen an individual solve a problem solely by him- or herself. Think about it.) You can say a team is a group of people working on a shared objective. In regard to teamwork in the lean sense, I ...

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Jeff Liker: Teamwork is not “work teams” By Jeff Liker, author of The Toyota Way and co-author of Toyota Product Development System and Toyota Under Fire - Last updated: Tuesday, May 10, 2011

I had in interesting experience about fifteen years ago when we were doing research for a book about Japanese manufacturing in the U.S. (called Remade in America).  We were studying a Japanese auto supplier with overseas plants in the U.S.   One question we had was how the Japanese would bring teamwork to the American culture.  At the time there was a lot of discussion about the use of work groups ...

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The Lean Edge: What does “teamwork” mean in lean? By The Lean Edge, - Last updated: Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Mike Rother: Ain’t No Such Thing as Sustaining By Mike Rother, Author of Toyota Kata and co-author of Learning to See - Last updated: Friday, April 29, 2011

Question: How can lean results be sustained over time? It's been difficult to maintain lean improvements. Our efforts have generated many successes, but not so many sustainable ones. We tend to involve dedicated lean experts, who become a constraint. When they turn their attention to the next improvement project, the one just completed degrades. Overall improvement progress is slow and the cultural change to continuous improvement is minimal. We should get ...

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Art Smalley: Tools, Rules, Principles, and Lean Wallpaper By Art Smalley, author of Creating Level Pull. Co-author of A3 Thinking and Kaizen Methods: Six Steps to Improvement - Last updated: Tuesday, April 19, 2011

I have had a long and somewhat tortured fascination with regards to this topic and other similar questions. In terms of background when I returned to the United States from Japan in the mid 1990's after working for Toyota Motor Corporation it was difficult for me at least to recognize many of the efforts that were supposedly modeled after the Toyota Production System (TPS).  Some of it was frankly bewildering. ...

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Mike Orzen: 3 signs of sustainability By Mike Orzen, Coauthor of "Lean IT, Enabling and Sustaining Your Lean Enterprise” Educator and Coach, The Lean IT Guy - Last updated: Sunday, April 17, 2011

Absolutely! All the examples of companies who have sustained lean thinking (and operational results) have common elements: 1) Principle -based leadership that acts as a rudder to create a constancy of purpose and alignment throughout the organization (note this is not based on a specific person); 2) Management systems that drive the right behavior; and 3) a culture of continuous problem solving, accountability, and shared responsibility. Who else besides Toyota is ...

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Michael Ballé: Lean is never sustainable, but one person can become better and better at it By Michael Balle, co-author of The Gold Mine and The Lean Manager - Last updated: Friday, April 15, 2011

Where do lean results come from ? increased Sales are supported by a firm understanding of PROTECT THE CUSTOMER within the company. Delivering products without defects on time has a remarkably rapid effect on sales. Sales are further developed by improving the engineering of the product or service in order to better satisfy customers, but the first step is to teach the organization to protect the final customer by protecting each ...

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Jean Cunningham: Sustaining Lean By Jean Cunningham, Co-author of 'Real Numbers' and 'Easier, Simpler, Faster' - Last updated: Monday, April 4, 2011

As CFO, one method I used to sustain lean thinking was to ask "what has improved since our last meeting" during each of our monthly metric meetings.   Each person on the team was empowered to make change within their jobs or with others.  And we had a cadence....for instance we had an arbitrary Takt of 1 per week.  So as well as discussing what had changed, one team member who was our "counter" would share ...

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Steve Spear: Why Lean Fails: Operational Excellence Treated as Tool Based Vocation, Not Principle Based Profession By Steven Spear, Author of 'The High-Velocity Edge' and 'Chasing the Rabbit' - Last updated: Sunday, April 3, 2011

Lean efforts are aplenty.  Rare are successful ones—characterized by sufficient improvement in the ability to create great value by delighting customers with best in class products and services, offered reliably and responsively to change, done affordably and profitably.   Nearly unheard of are sustainable successes—characterized by success over years and waves of market change and leadership succession. Why? The few world-class organizations that compete well on ‘operational excellence,’ reflected in quality, variety, time ...

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