GET BETTER AT ACHIEVING LEAN GOALS

By Bill Costantino and Mike Rother

February 3, 2013

We often mistake confident predictions and plans for accurate ones. But the more humility we have about our predictions, the more successfully we can iterate our way to the future.

Written by:

Bill Costantino|Mike Rother

About Mike Rother

Mike is co-author of two groundbreaking LEI workbooks, Learning to See: value-stream mapping to add value and eliminate muda, which received a Shingo Research Award in 1999 and Creating Continuous Flow: an action guide for managers, engineers and production associates, which received a Shingo Award in 2003. Mike’s recent books are Toyota Kata (McGraw-Hill), Toyota Kata Culture, and the forthcoming Toyota Kata Practice Guide.

Mike is an engineer, researcher, and teacher on the subjects of management, leadership, improvement, adaptiveness, and change in human organizations. His affiliations have included the Industrial Technology Institute in Ann Arbor, the University of Michigan College of Engineering, the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation, Stuttgart, and the Technical University Dortmund. Mike works to develop scientific thinking in individuals, teams and organizations, shares his findings widely, and is in the Association for Manufacturing Excellence Hall of Fame.

About Bill Costantino

Bill Costantino was one of the very first employees at Toyota’s Georgetown, KY auto plant where he worked as a Group Leader for seven years. He has subsequently worked for the last 17 years as an independent consultant, supporting companies making the transition to more lean ways of operating. He has consulted extensively across a wide range of clients in diverse industries. For the last 2 years, Bill has been collaborating closely with Mike Rother, author of “”Toyota Kata””. Mike & Bill have developed and now co-lead a three-day professional development workshop with the University of Michigan, teaching the underlying philosophy and critical routines of the Toyota Kata approach to management. Bill is also an LEI Toyota Kata instructor.