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Should I pursue waste elimination or lead-time reduction?
Dear Gemba Coach: We’re having a heated debate in our company over whether to pursue cost reduction through waste elimination by…
Read article How Do You Find – or Develop – the Right Sensei to Lead Lean?
Dear Gemba Coach: We have become skilled at indicating what goes wrong, but solving the problems is not our strength.…
Read article Toyota the Bad Guy
Recently I am cornered frequently by beleaguered lean change agents eager to show me their scars inflicted by re-energized resistors.…
Read article How Do I Keep My Lean Team Motivated for the Long Term?
Dear Gemba Coach: My team often feels that they are alone in their improvement efforts. Even after all our work…
Read article Lean Transformation: Thinking, Learning, & Experimenting For Today’s Complicated Operating System
Matt Zayko, an LEI faculty member, notes that many organizations that have tried to implement lean in the past 20 years have…
Read article The End of the Beginning
NUMMI closes today. The GM-Toyota joint venture assembling motor vehicles in California lasted 25 years - a very long time…
Read article NUMMI Closes and is Crushed by N.Y. Times Columnist Bob Herbert
New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc. closes its doors for the final time this Thursday, April Fools' Day. It is a…
Read article The End Of The Line For GM-Toyota Joint Venture
LEI Founder and Chairman Jim Womack and Senior Advisor John Shook are among the key experts interviewed for this look at the…
Read article Is Toyota No Longer a Guiding Light?
Dear Gemba Coach: I'm the lean manager of a mid-sized company, and have been getting teased by many folks about Toyota's…
Read article Toyota Troubles: Fighting the Demons of Complexity
An interview with Professor Takahiro Fujimoto, Manufacturing Management Research Center, University of Tokyo
Read article Lean for the Long Term
I've now been thinking about lean continuously for thirty years, since the fall of 1979 when my MIT bosses asked…
Read article Robert Cole’s Observations on the Liker-Shook Dialogue regarding Toyota’s Quality Crisis
I have previously introduced readers of this column to Robert Cole, Professor Emeritus at Berkeley, former long-time professor at the…
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