Is “Old Thinking” the Problem?
"Business authors sometimes suggest that well-established, successful companies decline, while newer companies do well, because the new companies are not encumbered by an earlier, outmoded way of thinking. On the…
"Business authors sometimes suggest that well-established, successful companies decline, while newer companies do well, because the new companies are not encumbered by an earlier, outmoded way of thinking. On the…
"The idea is to find a method that is better than the current one. (Note that "better" is not subjective. It must be quantifiable and measurable.) The Toyota Way Fieldbook…
"What is so striking about Toyota's Georgetown factory is, in fact, that it only looks like a car factory. It's really a big brain—a kind of laboratory focused on a…
"We are often asked how to sustain lean changes. A kaizen event produces many positive changes, a lean project reduces inventory, and we want to gather up the gains and…
I'll move on to a another topic tomorrow, but conclude this topic with three short quotes: "Go see, ask why, show respect" (Fujio Cho, former president of Toyota Motor Manufacturing…
"The value of genchi genbutsu isn't necessarily the specific act of going and seeing, but the philosophy of deeply understanding the current condition before making a decision or trying to…
First, my apologies to any of you who don't like the "Lean" tendency to use Japanese words. I ask you to bear with me for a brief discussion of the…
"Going to the gemba means observing firsthand how our products are being designed, built, used, and what problems we have. There are always problems because we are never perfect. The…
"Gemba is roughly translated from the Japanese as 'the real place.' In this sense, real refers to where the action is happening. To illustrate, Japanese television news reporters covering the…
Do you have questions like these:"If my business grows and I hire other people to help me, what will that be like? If I do it right, will it be…