Undertaking a business transformation is difficult. After all, who are the only people who like change? Wet babies. Depending upon where you start, it can take a lot of heavy lifting from many people in the organization. It’s easy to get caught up conducting “activities” on a weekly or monthly basis, which is why it’s …
Tips for Being Grateful During Your Lean Journey Read More »
Two weeks ago, on my podcast, I interviewed a consultant who was part of a team that generated “hundreds of millions of dollars” in savings within the oil and gas industry. Knowing the vast landscape and impossible places that many oil rigs are in, it makes sense oil and gas is at the forefront of …
One of the key elements on my American Lean Weekday podcast is the weekly interviews that I conduct with companies on their Lean Journey. These companies are from various industries and are all different sizes. I have interviewed leaders from family-owned businesses to multi-national organizations. These are keynotes from a conversation with Tim Bayer, President …
Hansen Plastics Sees Huge Success from their 12 year Lean Journey! Read More »
Developing a communication driven culture is important if you are going to have long-term success, especially now. We all know that it is harder to communicate via Zoom or Teams or any of the other remote communication platforms. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t make improvements in your communication. I’m going to assume we have all …
The reports of companies stating they will allow employees to work from home forever are growing every day. Twitter, Square (same CEO), Shopify, Slack, Facebook, are a few of the tech companies stating employees can work from home indefinitely. Many fintech companies like Mastercard, Capital One, and others are allowing employees to work from home. …
One of Henry Ford’s sayings is that “Coming together is the beginning, keeping together is progress and working together is a success.” Grand words from a great Lean influencer. The tendency might be to put off your Lean activities given the current environment. I believe it’s more important than ever to keep your Lean journey …
I’m always searching for articles to gather information to share with you regarding Industry 4.0 and other topics. This week I came across an article sharing how the Army is testing Augmented Reality on dogs. Augmented reality is going to the dogs! Dogs are deployed in lots of ways in the Army. They sniff out …
We call it continuous improvement because we continually want to improve in small increments. Unlike a sport, there is no time limit and you don’t keep score. Continuous improvement is not a race and you are never done. Sometimes you’ll want to focus on specific items to improve every day with Kata. What are some …
Given the impact to supply chain performance that many manufacturers have felt do to the pandemic, it’s become important to speed up the use of technology. Implementing more technology as part of Industry 4.0 will allow you to take on larger improvement activities. Here are some tips you can implement to digitize your lean efforts. …
Two weeks ago we talked about the eight wastes and using a waste walk to identify them in your organization. As a review, your rapid improvement team members go on a waste walk, capture the wastes they observe, and placed them on a DOWNTIME chart. Then they brainstorm solutions to eliminate the waste. A great …