This week is the anniversary of Hurricane Sandy, the hurricane that hit the New York/New Jersey coast last year, the largest Atlantic hurricane on record, and the second costliest hurricane in US history. Check out New York Magazine’s interactive progress report to get a feel for which areas are still recovering. There’s a lot of work left to do, but people and communities are incredibly resilient and come together in new and powerful ways when disaster strikes.
In case you missed it, check out how Jamie Bonini and Lisa Richardson from TSSC (Toyota Production System Support Center) have worked with Metro Food Distribution to provide more food, more quickly and efficiently, to the families who have needed assistance after the storm. Whenever we get too wrapped up in A3s and kaizen events and other ways we try to make Lean relevant to our daily work, here’s a great story showing how Lean can help make the world a better place.
Just to recap, check out those numbers! Original box packing time: 3 minutes. Now: 11 seconds. Original distribution time: 3 hours. Now: 1 hr, 20 min.
Thank you to Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman of Supermarche for telling this story so beautifully!
Learn more about how The Food Bank For New York City is using lean thinking and practice to continuously improve the good work they do at the 2014 Lean Transformation Summit.
