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Operations

Fully grasp how lean thinking and practice transform operations, yielding workflows that require less human effort, less space, less capital, less material, and less time…

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Kaizen Means You Care

"Lean leaders, and lean consultants (like me), often talk about the organizational benefits of kaizen: lower costs, bigger profits, shorter lead times, higher quality, etc.,"…

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Look Around You, Find Your Lean Inspiration

After an awful experience with an online travel agency and way too much time spent trying to fix an error the company made, Planet Lean…

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How do I keep visual management from becoming “wallpaper?" A Q&A with John Drogosz

"Many managers try to convince everyone (including themselves) that they are visually managing their projects or departments," writes John Drogosz, "but during the gemba walk…

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Building Problem Solving Muscle at University of Michigan Health System

"We are beginning to realize the wisdom of Henry Ford’s adage: 'There are no big problems, there are just a lot of little problems,...'"

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Why don’t middle managers practice A3 thinking? (Part 2)

Dear Gemba Coach: I’m a lean consultant, and have been hired by a large service organization to develop an A3 problem solving training program for…

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A Total Shift in Mindset

Lean thinking isn't easy to put into practice, particularly for beginners. Ghassan Saleh, lean engineer at MaineGeneral Medical Center in Augusta, Maine, shares his advice…

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Coach's Corner: Designing the Entire Value Stream From Concept to Product End Life

Creating an environmentally-conscious value stream can be done with LPPD principles in mind. Just ask Katrina Appell, who explains how LPPD can help reduce both…

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Podcast

Embracing Regret for Better Living: A WLEI Podcast with author Dan Pink

LEI chats with author Dan Pink about his new book and how it relates to retrospective outlooks and continuous improvement.

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Dan Pink WLEI

Article

The Mind of the Lean Manager

Several years ago I started to talk about the need to move beyond lean tools - including the very powerful concept of Value-Stream Mapping -…

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The Truth Lies in the Lies of Fiction

Twenty years ago, while flying to a final vacation before the onset of children, I found myself reading Eli Goldratt's The Goal. It was a great…

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Why Lean Thinkers Should Ground Their Work in Sustainability

There's a solid case for implementing green thinking just as there's one for implementing lean thinking. The challenge, but more importantly the opportunity for business,…

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Press Release

Influential Foodservice Newsletter Supports Steady Work Author’s Idea to Redesign #Restaurant Processes During Pandemic Shutdowns.

The Ashton Report cited the recommendation by Karen Gaudet that #QSR restaurants use lockdown time to develop better business processes.

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