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Press Releases

2012
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2009 [back to top]
  • 12/15/2009 Lean Enterprise Institute Offers Miami Training in Lean for Healthcare and Hospitals

    A new workshop on how to apply the lean business concept of mistake-proofing (poka-yoke) to healthcare and hospitals is among three workshops about applying lean concepts to healthcare being offered in February by the Lean Enterprise Institute.

  • 12/3/2009 Creating a Lean Learning Organization

    The Lean Enterprise Institute will run a series of workshops for managers who want to learn how to become leaders capable of creating lean learning organizations February 2-4 in Miami. The program will include a special track for applying lean concepts to healthcare.

  • 11/25/2009 Lean Enterprise Institute Offers New Training on Lean for Healthcare

    A new workshop from the Lean Enterprise Institute introduces healthcare professionals to how the methods, tools, and underlying philosophy of lean thinking create measureable improvements in healthcare.

  • 11/25/2009 12 Chicago Workshops Teach Lean Manufacturing, Lean Logistics

    A lean training curriculum from LEI will cover essential lean methods, including value-stream mapping, standardized work, problem solving, lean for job shops, new workshops about 5S and building kaizen skills, plus a special supply-stream track for applying lean concepts to logistics, warehousing, and distribution.

  • 11/23/2009 If You Don’t Enjoy Learning, Don’t Try Lean Management

    “I don’t believe everybody should start lean,” declared Michael Ballé, co-author of The Lean Manager, the new business novel about a lean transformation, published by the nonprofit Lean Enterprise Institute.  “Lean is a method to make you more effective than your competitors,” Balled continued during the latest Business901 podcast interview. “So lean is not something you have to do. Lean is something you want to do to beat competitors."

  • 10/8/2009 How Toyota can get its groove back

    Jim Womack, founder of the Lean Enterprise Institute, is interviewed on the Marketplace radio program about what Toyota, which had reported losses of more than $800 million, needed to do to get back on track.

  • 10/1/2009 Lean Enterprise Institute Honors the Work of Two Lean Accounting Professors
    The LEI Excellence in Lean Accounting Award annually recognizes teachers or students who take new knowledge about lean accounting then apply it in the classroom.
  • 9/14/2009 The Lean Manager, New Business Novel, Animates Lean Management

    The Lean Manager, published by the Lean Enterprise Institute (LEI) as the sequel to the popular business novel The Gold Mine, shows managers and executives how to go beyond implementing the tools of lean production to creating and sustaining a complete lean management system.

  • 8/8/2009 200,000 Preventable Deaths: It’s Time for Fundamental Change
    The Lean Enterprise Institute and the ThedaCare Center for Healthcare Value, which have formed a partnership to apply lean thinking to improve healthcare, respond to news reports that 200,000 Americans die annually from preventable medical errors.
  • 7/27/2009 Lean Enterprise Institute Brings Lean Management Training to Philadelphia
    An award-winning faculty from the Lean Enterprise Institute will teach a series of workshops in Philadelphia, PA, Sept. 29-Oct.1 on how to apply lean management to service, manufacturing, office, and healthcare value streams.
  • 7/27/2009 Lean Healthcare and Lean Hospital Workshops Set for Philadelphia
    Lean Education workshops from the Lean Enterprise Institute set for Philadelphia, PA, Sept. 29-Oct.1 will feature a special series of courses on how to apply lean thinking to healthcare and hospitals.
  • 7/24/2009 Managing to Learn, Book on A3 Management, “Superb,” Sloan Management Review
    A story in the summer 2009 issue of MIT’s Sloan Management Review described Managing to Learn: Using the A3 Management Process to Solve Problems, Gain Agreement, Mentor, and Lead by John Shook as “superb.”
  • 7/16/2009 Lean Enterprise Institute Runs Lean Management Training
    The Lean Enterprise Institute (LEI) is offering a continuing series of workshops at its Cambridge, MA, office on how to solve a variety of practical lean management problems for executives and managers in service, healthcare, and industrial companies wanting to create a lean business system and the culture to support it.
  • 7/16/2009 "Follow the Learner" a New Book on Lean Leadership from the Lean Enterprise Institute
    Dr. Sami Bahri, the world's first lean dentist, offers practical advice and insights, not just for healthcare professionals, but for any leader trying to create a lean culture that supports continuous learning and improvement.
  • 6/30/2009 Lean Management Training for Change Agents
    Speakers highlighting the Lean Change Agent Symposium are Jim Womack, LEI founder and chairman, co-author of The Machine That Changed the World, Lean Thinking, Seeing the Whole, and Lean Solutions, John Shook, LEI senior advisor, co-author of Learning to See, and author of Managing to Learn, and Mike Hoseus, executive director, Center for Quality People & Organizations, co-author of Toyota Culture. Change Agents will gather in Detroit, Aug. 25-27, 2009, to build skills in change management, value-stream mapping, A3 management, how to overcome resistance, and much more.
  • 6/16/2009 Lean Management Training for Service and Industry in Minneapolis
    The Lean Enterprise Institute (LEI) will run eight public workshops July 14-16 in Minneapolis on how to implement lean business concepts in service and manufacturing companies. Courses cover value-stream mapping, A3 management, standard work, lean logistics, and much more.
  • 4/30/2009 The Birth of Lean, a New Lean Enterprise Institute Book, Is Perfect for Tough Times
    Toyota was struggling to survive when Taiichi Ohno, Eiji Toyoda, and a handful of managers began experimenting with methods that ultimately became the vaunted Toyota Production System. Now, as companies worldwide struggle, Ohno and other TPS creators bring you for the first time in English their recollections and practical insights about The Birth of Lean.
  • 4/30/2009 John Shook, author of Managing to Learn, Explains Lean Management Advantages
    John Shook, a former Toyota manager and senior advisor to the nonprofit Lean Enterprise Institute summarized key lean management lessons for managers in today's economic crisis during a keynote presentation by noting parallels between the current crisis and the crisis Toyota faced around 1950.
  • 4/29/2009 Lean Management Training for Service and Industry in Virginia
    An award-winning faculty from the Lean Enterprise Institute will teach a series of 11 workshops on fundamental and more advanced lean management concepts for industry and service companies on June 2-4, 2009, in Herndon, VA.
  • 4/3/2009 Lean Production Essentials Concisely Explained in Kaizen Express
    Kaizen Express is a concise but precise illustrated guide to the fundamentals of the Toyota Production System (TPS) and how to implement them. It is ideal for individuals or teams starting a lean transformation or in need of a quick refresher on the fundamental concepts of lean manufacturing.
  • 4/3/2009 Managing to Learn, a Lean Leadership Book, Wins Shingo Research Prize
    In this popular book, author John Shook explains how the A3 process links strategy and problem solving, thus transforming managing in order to “command-and-control” into “managing to learn.
  • 4/1/2009 Lean Management Training Hosted by Cambridge Nonprofit
    The Cambridge MA-based Lean Enterprise Institute, founded by management thinker and former MIT researcher James Womack in 1997, is running a successful series of monthly workshops at its office for New England companies seeking to implement lean business systems.
  • 3/23/2009 Tough Times Will Separate True Lean-Thinking Companies from the Pretenders
    The economic crisis will separate the truly lean companies from the “fashionably” lean companies, according to business author and lean management expert John Shook. Shook made his remarks during a keynote speech at the Third Annual Lean Transformation Summit, March 4-5, 2009, at the Hyatt Regency Atlanta. Sponsored by the nonprofit Lean Enterprise Institute (LEI), the Summit and pre-conference workshops drew approximately 300 executives and managers from service and manufacturing companies that are taking lean beyond the application of isolated tools to the creation of lean business systems built on lean management.
  • 3/23/2009 10 Seattle Workshops for Lean Production, Healthcare, and Services
    Adopting lean leadership and adapting lean concepts to a variety of production and nonproduction environments are among the challenges addressed at the Lean Enterprise Institute’s Western Regional Lean Workshops, May 5-7, 2009, in Seattle, WA.
  • 3/18/2009 The True Story of an Unlikely Cure for U.S.’s Sick Hospitals and Health System
    In The Nun and the Bureaucrat book and video set, doctors, nurses, and administrators at two large hospital systems explain how lean management methods adopted from Toyota cut costs while improving care and staff morale -- without outside funds or government help.
  • 2/18/2009 10 Durham Workshops on Lean Management for Production and Services
    A series of 10 workshops in Durham, NC, April 14-16, 2009, on how to implement lean management will have a special emphasis on lean leadership. The comprehensive series, presented by the Lean Enterprise Institute, also will offer workshops on lean principles for repetitive manufacturing, job shops, management accounting, and value-stream mapping for office and service environments.
  • 2/18/2009 Lean Management Accounting Workshop Teaches How to Resolve Conflicts Between Lean Thinking and Traditional Management Accounting
    The nonprofit Lean Enterprise Institute (LEI) will present a workshop on “Management Accounting for Lean Businesses,” April 16, 2009, in Durham, NC. The instructor is Orest Fiume, former vice president of finance and administration of The Wiremold Company. The workshop helps finance and operations managers who are running into conflicts between their traditional management accounting systems and the application of lean principles.
  • 2/2/2009 11 Atlanta Workshops on Lean Management Help Regional Companies Compete
    A series of 11 workshops on lean management presented in Atlanta, March 10-12, 2009, will help area companies cut costs, improve profits, and defend jobs, according to the Cambridge, MA-based nonprofit Lean Enterprise Institute (LEI), which is running the workshops.
  • 2/2/2009 LEI Hosts Series of Lean Management Workshops Through June
    The nonprofit Lean Enterprise Institute (LEI) will host a series of five lean management workshops at its Cambridge, MA, training room between March 25 and June 17, 2009.
  • 1/6/2009 Lean Training Extended to Management, Service, and Support
    The Lean Enterprise Institute launched an expanded training schedule for 2009 with workshops and seminars on lean management, leadership, and culture change in addition to workshops on the technical tools for establishing lean transformations in service, support, logistics and production.
2008 [back to top]
  • 12/12/2008 12 Workshops Help Companies Compete Using Lean Management
    The nonprofit Lean Enterprise Institute (LEI) will present 12 workshops Jan. 13-15, 2009, in Los Angeles, CA, on how to apply fundamental and advanced concepts of lean management in service and support value streams as well as production.
  • 10/16/2008 Backsliding is Back as the Biggest Obstacle to Lean Transformations
    Companies implementing lean principles are struggling to sustain the gains, according to the Lean Enterprise Institute's 2008 survey of the Lean Community. Asked to identify the biggest obstacles to implementing lean principles, 32.1% of managers and executives selected "backsliding to the old ways of working" as number one, compared to just 12.2% in 2007. The number one obstacle cited last year, "middle management resistance" to lean conversions fell to second place, dropping seven percentage points from 36.1% last year to 29.1%
  • 10/15/2008 New Book Managing to Learn Gets to the Heart of Lean Management
    Author John Shook explains how the A3 process links strategy and problem solving, thus transforming managing in order to "command-and-control" into "managing to learn."
  • 6/20/2008 Lean Enterprise Institute Launches Lean Management Timeline and Book with Video
    Two new free resources -- a timeline of key ideas that led to the modern system of lean management and an online e-book of first-person testimony about how lean management principles changed people's lives -- now are available at lean.org.
  • 6/19/2008 New Lean Lexicon Covers Strategic Planning, Product Development, Supply Streams
    The 4th edition of the Lean Lexicon, published by the Lean Enterprise Institute, (LEI), has new terms and illustrations about how lean business principles pertain to strategic planning, supply streams, and product development.
  • 3/11/2008 Womack Advances Lean Management as Successor to Traditional Management
    Management expert James P. Womack, Ph.D., who led the MIT research team that coined the term lean, explains that the lean enterprise movement is evolving beyond the current tool age focused on implementing individual methods such as value-stream mapping, kaizen, kanban, etc., to a new age focused on implementing lean management, where the key for executives is to answer the fundamental questions of Purpose, Process, People.
  • 3/11/2008 14 Organizations Create Lean Global Network to Advance Lean Thinking Worldwide
    Fourteen nonprofit or nongovernmental organizations on five continents have formed the Lean Global Network (LGN), a network committed to advancing worldwide a set of ideas known as lean management, derived from practices pioneered by Toyota.
  • 3/10/2008 2 Prize-Winning Books from LEI Advance Lean Management Beyond the Shop Floor
    Two Lean Enterprise Institute (LEI) books that advance the application of lean management principles beyond the shop floor to strategy and product development won 2008 Shingo Research Prizes. Getting the Right Things Done: a leader's guide to planning and execution by Pascal Dennis and Lean Product and Process Development by the late Allen Ward received prizes at the 20th Annual Shingo Prize Conference.
2007 [back to top]
2006 [back to top]
2005 [back to top]
  • 9/30/2005 Lean Solutions
    Consumption should be easier and more satisfying due to better, cheaper products.  Instead, it requires growing time and hassle to get all of our goods and services to work properly and work together. The reason is that companies don't view consumption as a process. In this groundbreaking book, Womack and Jones propose a radical new leap:  extend the lean philosophy to consumption.
  • 9/1/2005 2005 Opinion Survey Cites Top Trends: Value-Stream Mapping and Lean With 6 Sigma
    Value-stream mapping and combining lean manufacturing with six sigma were virtually tied as the biggest industry trends, according to a  2005 customer survey by the nonprofit Lean Enterprise Institute (LEI).
  • 6/15/2005 The Gold Mine cover art
    Cover for The Gold Mine lean novel at 600 dpi
  • 6/1/2005 Q and A With the Authors of The Gold Mine, a Business Novel About Lean Production
    Authors Freddy and Michael Ballé share insights into the book's characters and how to combine the human and technical elements when implementing a lean production system. (For the complete interview, visit the Library section.)
  • 4/29/2005 Workbooks on Lean Material Handling and Pull Production Receive Shingo Prizes
    Two additional workbooks in LEI's toolkit, Making Materials Flow and Creating Level Pull, have received Shingo Prizes. Making Materials Flow explains how to create a lean material-handling system for flowing purchased parts and information to and from work cells in a plant. Creating Level Pull explains how to implement a level and pull-based scheduling system across all value streams within an entire facility.
2004 [back to top]
  • 10/6/2004 Can-ban or Kahn-bahn? New Lean Lexicon Answers This and Much More
    The second edition of the Lean Lexicon, an illustrated glossary of key lean manufacturing terms, features new and expanded definitions and -- by popular request -- a simple pronunciation guide to Japanese terms.
  • 4/1/2004 New Workbook Tackles Lean Production Control and System Kaizen
    The Creating Level Pull workbook explains the step-by-step process of implementing a lean production control system that levels demand and ties together the flows of information and materials supporting every product family in a facility.
  • 2/18/2004 2004 Customer Survey Detects Solid Gains and Common Obstacles
    Nearly three-quarters of lean production efforts are reporting solid progress and the national economy appears to be benefiting, according to the first annual customer survey compiled by the nonprofit Lean Enterprise Institute (LEI).
  • 2/4/2004 Charts for 2004 Customer Survey
    The Lean Community reported solid gains as well as common obstacles in the first annual customer survey by LEI. It was based on a survey of the Lean Community and inventory turns calculated from data compiled by the U.S. Census Bureau.
2003 [back to top]
2002 [back to top]
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