Pascal Dennis
President,
Lean Pathways
Pascal is a professional engineer, author, and advisor to companies making the lean leap. He developed his lean skills at Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada and by working with lean masters in North America and Japan. In leadership positions at TMMC, he supported the launching of several new models and the hiring and training of 2,000 new team members. He has supported lean implementation at leading international companies in sectors as diverse as automotive, process industries, heavy equipment, construction, and health care. The focus of his lean implementation work is strategic planning and execution (strategy deployment), quality, delivery and cost management, health and safety, and business process improvement.
Pascal is the author of Lean Production Simplified, Andy & Me: Crisis and Transformation on the Lean Journey, and the LEI publication Getting the Right Things Done – a Leader’s Guide to Planning and Execution, which have all won Shingo Research Prizes. His latest book is The Remedy: Bringing Lean Thinking Out of the Factory to Transform the Entire Organization. Pascal aids companies implementing lean through Lean Pathways, Inc.
Articles by Pascal Dennis
Once More: What is Strategy Deployment, and Why Should You Care?
March 24, 2021
Pascal Dennis
Strategy deployment helps keep lean practitioners focused on the prize—creating value for the customer, says Pascal Dennis in the foreword to his Getting the Right Things Done book. Strategy deployment, also known as hoshin kanri, aligns, focuses, and engages our team members.
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Put Your Strategy on a Diet
July 02, 2014
Pascal Dennis
"When it comes to goal setting in most organizations, 'Just one more…' seems to be the compulsion," writes Pascal Dennis. Read why less is more when it comes to strategy.
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Value at the Imperial Grill
June 10, 2014
Pascal Dennis
"The Imperial Grill was a lean enterprise, and my folks, lean thinkers, though they would simply call it common sense," writes Pascal Dennis. In his first piece for the Post, Dennis shares the powerful business lessons he learned growing up at his family's Greek diner.
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Follow-up Q & A to the Webinar "Big Company Disease: What is it? and Why Should I Care?”
February 24, 2011
by Dennis, Pascal
The following questions represent the most-asked ones that we couldn't get to during the webinar “Big Company Disease” with presenter Pascal Dennis.
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Strategy Deployment In Action: One Executive's Perspective - Follow up Q & A
June 03, 2009
by Dennis, Pascal and David Brule
Webinar presenters David Brule and Pascal Dennis answer questions from their webinar about strategy deployment on March 12, 2009.
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Getting the Right Things Done (Author Q&A)
December 11, 2006
by Dennis, Pascal
A transcript of an interview with Pascal Dennis, author of Getting the Right Things Done: A Leader’s Guide to Planning and Execution. Q: What is Strategy Deployment?A: Strategy deployment is a planning and execution system, refined by companies like Toyota, but essentially invented and developed in North America by people like Peter Drucker and Joe (Joseph) Juran. Read the rest of the Q&A.
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Getting the Right Things Done (Introduction)
December 11, 2006
by Dennis, Pascal
What is strategy deployment—and why should you care? Within Toyota it’s known as hoshin kanri,1 the planning and execution system that has guided the development of the world’s most powerful production system. At Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada plant in Cambridge, Ontario, strategy deployment steered us through the chaos and stress of continual expansion. In 10 years we grew from a cornfield to a 3,000-person company making 230,000 cars per year. Read the rest of the Introduction.
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Books by Pascal Dennis
Getting the Right Things Done
by Pascal Dennis
For companies to be competitive, leaders must engage people at all levels in order to focus their energy and enable them to apply lean principles to everything they do. Strategy deployment, called hoshin kanri by Toyota, has proven to be the most effective process for meeting this ongoing challenge. In this book Pascal Dennis outlines the nuts and bolts of strategy deployment.
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