In the News
March 1, 2021
Read the Specialty Fabrics Review story: A Path Forward
Specialty Fabrics Review talked with Mark Reich, a senior coach at the Lean Enterprise Institute, for an informative Q&A dispelling misconceptions about lean management principles and their role in helping businesses adjust to challenges caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. The interview was part of the March 2021 story A Path Forward, in Specialty Fabrics Review, the main publication of Industrial Fabrics Association International. The article surveyed how a variety of companies in the specialty fabrics marketplace responded to the pandemic’s disruptions. (Used with permission.)
Read moreJanuary 14, 2021
Let’s Celebrate Work: Lean Thinking Is About, more Than Anything Else, Rethinking, Reimagining What Work Can Be.
Is your work meaningful or menial? IndustryWeek features a Lean Post article by Lean Enterprise Institute Senior Advisor John Shook challenging us to make all work meaningful by building our businesses based on the work itself and prioritizing the means over the ends.
Read moreDecember 16, 2020
Jabil Provides Muscle and More to Oakland University Lean Community Internships
A Jabil Inc. facility in Michigan is providing advice and equipment to engineering students at Oakland University in Rochester, MI, who are using lean management to improve operations at a Humble Design warehouse in nearby Pontiac, the university announced.
The project launched in 2019 with a $10,000 grant from the James P. Womack Scholarship and Philanthropy Fund, named for James Womack, founding CEO of the nonprofit Lean Enterprise Institute. The fund’s goal is to advance how lean management principles are taught in schools and learned through hands-on practice. The Humble Design warehouse provides donated furniture and household good to individuals, families, and veterans transitioning from homelessness.
Read moreAugust 10, 2020
Leading Beyond Fear: How One Company Took Advantage of the Covid-19 Job Market
Read moreJune 24, 2020
It’s A Great Time To Reimagine Ways To Be More Efficient
The commentary section of the Aston Report, an influential food service newsletter, had very positive words about the new book Steady Work on how to use continuous improvement techniques to boost productivity and customer satisfaction at QSR restaurants while reducing employee turnover. Improvement techniques in the book can be used during the disruption of the coronavirus pandemic to retool restaurant business processes, the commentary notes.
Read moreApril 23, 2020
A Toyota Way Teachable Moment
IndustryWeek's Continuous Improvement newsletter picks up the story by author and lean management practitioner Jeff Liker that originally appeared on the Lean Post.
Read moreApril 9, 2020
Steady Work, by Karen Gaudet with Emily Adams, Lean Enterprise Institute
From the review of Steady Work by Patricia Mody: “How could one tailor a work system to fit each store's unique layout and demand environment?. The solution: Playbook. Playbook is a system derived from classic industrial engineering by way of Toyota's production system.”
Read moreApril 7, 2020
Book Review: “Steady Work,” by Karen Gaudet
“The book is great. Read it now. It’ll take you less than an hour, and it’s a far more rewarding use of your time than real-time tracking of COVID infections." - from a review by #leanmanagement practitioner Dan Markovitz of the new book Steady Work.
Read moreJanuary 21, 2020
Supply Chain News: Learning from Toyota Way Principles versus Copying Toyota Practices
Supply Chain Digest reprinted an article from the Lean Enterprise Institute site by Jeff Liker, PhD, in which he advises companies that trying to copy Toyota’s culture "is impossible and ill-advised." Instead, companies should learn and adapt Toyota's lean management principles to their unique situations, problems, and goals.
Read moreJanuary 16, 2020
What Is an Engineer’s Most Important Tool? A Good Pair of Shoes
Senior Editor Jill Jusko’s interview with Jim Morgan, COO of electric car startup Rivian and director of LEI's Lean Product and Process Development program, makes the most popular list for 2019 content on industryweek.com. Morgan makes the point that although "big data" brings reams of potentially helpful manufacturing information to your fingertips, it does not eliminate the need to walk out to the plant floor to observe and learn what exactly is going on.
Read moreNovember 20, 2019
OU ISE students use ‘Lean Thinking’ to improve operations, optimize space at Humble Design warehouse
The nonprofit Lean Enterprise Institute provided student interns with a grant through its James P. Womack Scholarship and Philanthropy Fund. The grant supported students as they learned lean principles from Institute coaches and then applied the principles to improve operations at nearby Humble Design, an organization that helps veterans and families transition out of homelessness.
Read moreOctober 15, 2019
It’s Time for Lean Manufacturing
Lean Enterprise Institute's leaders provided insights about the cultural and technical elements of lean management in the October 2019 issue of Quality Magazine:
Lean management is “all about respecting the knowledge and capability of every employee at all levels. Everyone can seriously contribute to the purpose and mission of the organization. Everyone can be on the field all the time. You don’t have to have bench sitters,” said LEI Chairman Jean Cunningham.
“We really understood the detail of the work,” said coach Eric Ethington, LEI's lean product and process development manager. “We would observe the operator, look at the motions. We were counting the number of motions (not cycle time). This is significant because if you walk out and start timing someone, it changes things.”
Read moreWhy Doesn’t Lean Have a Seat at the Table?
In an IndustryWeek article that originally ran on the Lean Post, Steven Spear, an LEI faculty member, award-winning author, and senior lecturer in MIT’s Engineering Systems Division, asks why hasn’t lean management spread more widely. He suggests that it has not been framed in a way that addresses the strategic concern of managers. Instead, it is primarily taught as just tools.
Read moreSeptember 18, 2019
Lean Enterprise Institute Announces Its First Grant for Improving the Teaching of Lean Management in Schools at Every Level
The Boston-based nonprofit, a global thought leader in continuous improvement products and services, awarded its first grant to Oakland University, MI. The grant will support university students as they learn lean principles from Institute coaches. The student interns then will apply the principles to improve operations at nearby Humble Design, which helps veterans and families transition out of homelessness.
Read moreSeptember 10, 2019
Oakland University partners with Lean Enterprise Institute to improve Lean education
Oakland University Magazine announced that the James P. Womack Scholarship & Philanthropy Fund (the JPW Fund), to advance how lean thinking is taught in schools and learned through practice, has provided an initial $15,000 grant to the university. It will be used to place students into paid internships in community service organizations where they will continue their learning under the guidance of coaches from LEI. The fund will support creative learning experiences in partnership with schools teaching #lean thinking and community-based service organizations willing to provide gemba-based learning and improvement opportunities.
Read moreSeptember 3, 2019
Critical information that Americans in Hurricane Dorian’s path need to know
Fox News interviews Reese May, chief strategy officer at SBP, a disaster recovery nonprofit that has developed a new recovery model based on #lean concepts that are detailed in the new book Getting Home. He explains what people should know and do before and after a hurricane hits.
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