Article

Is there a spiritual dimension to lean?

Dear Gemba Coach: Is there a spiritual dimension to lean?

by Michael Ballé

Article

Ask Art: Will Lean Work for a Distributor?

Pairing distribution companies with Lean may seem counterintuitive to some. However author of The Lean Turnaround, Art Byrne, says this match actually makes perfect sense.

by Art Byrne

Article

New Book, Becoming the Change, Shows that Real Organizational Change Is Personal

Learn the cause of and cure for healthcare improvements that relapse to the old ways of working. Kim Barnes, Catalysis CEO, and John Toussaint, MD,…

Article

Maintaining Emotional Heijunka During a Pandemic

In this timely reflection, Jim Womack calls for "emotional heijunka": taking a deep breath, identifying the most important problems that must be addressed in a…

by James (Jim) Womack, PhD

Article

The Eight Wastes of Lean

Originally there were seven wastes identified by Taiichi Ohno for the Toyota Production System. As lean evolved into the rest of the enterprise and around…

by Jean Cunningham

Article

Same Foundation, New Message: LEI Aims to Make Things Better

Same Foundation, New Message: LEI Aims to Make Things Better At the Lean Enterprise Institute (LEI), our mission for 15 years has been to advance…

by Lex Schroeder

Article

Why Create Poka-yokes—and Why Disconnect Them?

I’m a manufacturing engineer and since I have started participating in kaizen workshops, I have noticed that production supervisors tend to disconnect some of the…

by Michael Ballé

Article

Seeking Radical Quality in the Tech Industry

The CTO of a website design firm explains how a recent book on radical quality improvement in manufacturing inspired him to initiate similar experiments in…

by Woody Rousseau

Video

Art of Lean on Work & Waste, Part 4: Excess Conveyance

Hi everyone. This is Art Smalley, president of Art of Lean, Incorporated. Today, on behalf of the Lean Enterprise Institute, we’re going to do a…

by Art Smalley

Article

Why ‘Framing’ is Crucial to Leadership and Encouraging Team Unity

A personal reflection of a company’s response to challenges brought on by Covid explores the fundamental thinking that drives how leaders lead — and explains…

by , Michael Ballé and Nicolas Chartier

Article

What Matters When Giving — or Accepting — the Gift of Lean Thinking and Practice

Some “flavors” of lean are better than others. Here’s a description of one of the best — contrasted with examples of bad leadership practices.

by Josh Howell

Article

Developing More than a Machine: How an MIT D-Lab Project for Tanzanian Farmers Produces Crops, Entrepreneurs, and Engineers

MIT D-Lab’s multi-grain thresher revolutionized farming in Tanzania—boosting efficiency, income, and inspiring the next generation of engineers through hands-on innovation.

by Chet Marchwinski

Article

Lean Summit Deep Dive into Hoshin Kanri

At Lean Summit 2025, Mark Reich shared insights from his decades of experience with hoshin kanri—from Toyota to LEI. He and a panel of executives…

Article

Public-Private Partnerships Lead To More Effective Government in WA

Since 2012, Washington state government has received more than 2,000 hours of volunteer advice, training, coaching, and/or facility tours from 132 lean experts representing 51…

by Darrell Damron

Article

Stability Before Innovation

Given its foundational strengths of stable and robust product development, production, supplier development, and general management system, Toyota is well poised to deliver innovative solutions…

by James (Jim) Womack, PhD

Article

Problem Solving Fast and Slow

"There are many paradoxes about the Toyota Production System," writes Ben Root. "Speed is certainly one of them. 'Do it slowly, but quickly.'" Read more.

by Ben Root

Article

LPPD Under the Sea: Efficient Product Design with Subsea 2.0

In this excerpt from the new book Designing the Future, authors Jim Morgan and Jeff Liker share the case study of TechnipFMC's work on a…

by Jeffrey Liker and James Morgan, PhD

Article

GTS⁶ + E³ = DNA (Break the Code for Standardization, Sustainability, and Kaizen)

There's no "formula" for doing Lean well, but there are principles and practices that keep you on track. Read Tracey Richardson's (memorable) advice for leading…

by Tracey Richardson

Article

Constancy of Purpose

The first of Dr. W. Edwards Deming’s 14 Points is "create constancy of purpose for continual improvement of products and service to society." When I…

by James (Jim) Womack, PhD

Article

Why is Flow Easy, and Quality Hard?

Dear Gemba Coach: My lean team has become proficient at teaching flow but it's not gaining traction when it comes to quality issues. Do you…

by Michael Ballé