Article

How Can Lean Take Root in a Crappy Culture?

Dear Gemba Coach: I've done a lot of working with lean, and recently started my first coaching/consulting gig. And while I'd love to help by…

by Michael Ballé

Article

What Should Lean Mean to Us?

Brent Wahba offers lean beginners a few tips for how to be most impactful. "If you are working on how to begin your situational Lean…

by Brent Wahba

Article

Why implement lean when it fails so often?

Dear Gemba Coach: Is it true that lean often fails? What’s the point then?

by Michael Ballé

Article

Do you use Japanese terms in your lean transformation or purposely avoid them? Why?

Recently we asked our community "Do you use Japanese terms in your lean transformation or purposely avoid them? Why?" Below is a list of all…

by Lean Enterprise Institute

Case Study

Toothbrush Plant Reverses Decay in Competitiveness

Faced with competition from plants in China and Mexico, Oral-B's Iowa City plant was slated for closure. But the rapid introduction of a lean system,…

by Chet Marchwinski

eBook

The Lean Manager

For many companies, the most important problem is not doing lean; it is becoming lean. How can they advance beyond realizing isolated gains from deploying lean tools, to fundamentally changing how…

by Freddy Ballé and Michael Ballé

Podcast

People-First Leadership: A Conversation Between Jim Morgan and Alan Mulally

Leading through challenging times means enhancing your work process and always looking to improve people's lives. Putting people first is just one of the many…

by Lean Leaper

Article

Lean Change Is Organizational and Personal

"Lean management is less about providing the right answers than asking the right questions and exploring those questions by engaging others in experiments to learn…

by Lean Leaper

Article

The Trouble with Lean Experts

Dear Gemba Coach: I run a Lean Promotion Office (LPO)  and my team mostly conducts kaizen events across the company. We are usually seen as successful…

by Michael Ballé

Article

Why Lean Management Requires Humble Hubris

A lean coach reflects on the mindset and related behaviors that are the standardized work of “being the change you wish to see.”

by Jim Benson

Article

Standardized Work in Machine-Intensive Processes

Dear Gemba Coach,Most lean literature and case studies to date focus on assembly type manufacturing which utilizes very people-intensive operations. This is not the case…

by Michael Ballé

Article

Ask Art: Where Will the Biggest Resistance to Lean Come From?

Resistance to Lean will come from every part of your organization, senior management included, says Lean veteran Art Byrne. Knowing where the biggest resistance will…

by Art Byrne

Article

Active Caring

Caring about others, caring about quality, caring about professionalism. When you care, continuous improvement and action come naturally. Turner Construction CEO Peter Davoren says that…

by Jim Benson

Article

Why 'Yes Chef!' Is No Longer the Answer

In order to meet the changing demands of today's restaurants, chefs must learn to evolve from old-school methods of the "brigade system" and learn to…

Article

We mapped a process, improved it, but six months later, performance is as bad as it was before – what are we missing?

Dear Gemba Coach: We’ve drawn the value-stream map of one of our complex production processes (17 steps), identified the key bottlenecks and improved the process.…

by Michael Ballé

Article

There are so many lean management principles to know and tools to master at the start – is there an easier way to begin?

Dear Gemba Coach: Isn’t there an easier way to start lean? For a beginner, it seems like such a mountain to climb – all these…

by Michael Ballé

Article

We meet daily to examine a new customer complaint. What do we do next?

Dear Gemba Coach: We’re a start-up and have taken your advice: we now have a customer wall and we meet daily to look into a…

by Michael Ballé

Article

Why We Believe Lean is Worth Our Unwavering Commitment

Lean provides a powerful alternative to short-term enterprise driven solely by the goal of maximizing profits while externalizing human and environmental costs, argues these leading…

by Lean Sensei Women

Article

Ask Art: Why Does Setup Time Reduction Matter So Much?

Setup reduction is a necessary step to go from traditional management to lean--or said another way, from batch to flow and from push to pull.…

by Art Byrne

Article

What To Do When Executives Think Continuous Improvement Smells Fishy

Top executives are smart, but they don't always see the value of continuous improvement efforts. And continuous improvement professionals don't always communicate that value well…