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Jim Womack's eLetters & Columns

Jim Womack’s efforts to spread Lean Thinking throughout the world led him to found the Lean Enterprise Institute. While he was the CEO and Chairman of LEI (Jim is currently the Senior Advisor of LEI), he wrote a very popular series of eletters about lean. These are those letters, please feel free to share them with your colleagues. Jim Womack's efforts to spread Lean Thinking throughout the world led him to found the Lean Enterprise Institute.

The Power of Yokoten
September 22, 2020
I’ve written a lot about yokoten in recent years – the practice of spreading good (lean) ideas horizontally between and across organizations from their point of initial success (“Yoko” means in Japanese horizontal.) It turns out that this is hard, even for the methods and tools needed to create lean value streams. Lean requires practice, even when the theory is clear and simple, and it’s hard to find enough teachers with enough experience and time to lead the cycles of practice needed for sustainable yokoten. read more »
Maintaining Emotional Heijunka During a Pandemic
March 31, 2020
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 given process, and screening out the emotional inputs we are bombarded with so that we don't get into the dumps or soar with false euphoria. read more »
Join the Conversation and Stop the Rework
May 9, 2019
In the spring of 1997, as I was starting the nonprofit Lean Enterprise Institute, I visited a company that I hoped would be a founding sponsor. I explained to the senior leadership that a lean enterprise was far more than a brilliant production organization, as had they assumed. It was also a brilliant product development organization including a brilliant production process design team. read more »
Getting Over Gemba-phobia
July 22, 2011
“I work in a company where leaders think gemba walks are scheduled visits to the factory to look at performance visibility boards (forgetting to turn around and look at the work.) How do we try and correct this false thinking?” Jim responds with shared observations and suggestions for helping leaders learn how to walk the gemba. read more »
Gemba Walk Checklist
July 13, 2011
Jim responds to this question from his Gemba Walks webinar: “Do you find it easier to complete your Gemba Walk if you have a pre-defined form to take with you on the walk?” read more »
Who's Responsible
July 6, 2011
In reviewing my calendar, I find that I have taken eight gemba walks in the last five weeks. These ranged from manufacturing value streams in China, New York state, and Florida, to a healthcare value stream in Massachusetts, to regulatory value streams in Washington, DC, and Florida. At some point along every walk I stopped to ask a simple question: "Who is responsible for this value stream?" And, in every case, the answer was "no one." read more »
Passing the Baton
September 28, 2010
Jim Womack and John Shook reflect on passing the baton of leadership at the Lean Enterprise Institute read more »
The Joy of a Greenfield
August 24, 2010
Last spring on a trip to Central America, I encountered that wonderful sight for process improvers, a “greenfield”. And I literally mean a green field. It was behind a hospital operated by a non-governmental organization (NGO) where I was volunteering my time. The problem I was assigned was to dispose of 15 years of personal medical records in a country with no recycling. read more »
Homicide by Example?
July 13, 2010
My LEI colleague Dave LaHote is fond of saying that managers - and especially senior managers - overestimate their effectiveness, particularly as they seek to improve their organizations through formal initiatives. And they underestimate the impact (often negative) of their daily personal actions on employees. read more »
The Tipping Point?
June 10, 2010
Early efforts to apply lean principles to healthcare faltered and for many years the challenge seemed to be too great. It took time and many false starts to translate ideas born in the factory to the situation at the bedside. But, after 15 years of experiments, Lean Thinkers now have the tools to reform healthcare delivery. read more »
Becoming Horizontal in a Vertical World
May 18, 2010
One of my favorite value-stream walks is with the senior managers of several organizations who share and jointly manage a value-creating process that stretches all the way from raw materials to the end customer. I've been taking walks of this sort for more than 20 years and I usually see the same thing: Smart, hard working managers, each trying to optimize their portion of the value stream and wondering why there is so much inventory, interruption, and waste along the stream and why it is so hard to truly satisfy the customer waiting at the end. read more »
The End of the Beginning
April 1, 2010
NUMMI closes today. The GM-Toyota joint venture assembling motor vehicles in California lasted 25 years - a very long time for a joint venture - and about 8 million vehicles rolled off the line. For those working at NUMMI this is a truly sad day and I hope our Lean Community will reach out to help the many employees there with advanced lean skills find new jobs utilizing their knowledge. But for the rest of the global Lean Community, this day is not just one of sadness. I think it marks the end of the beginning. read more »
Lean for the Long Term
March 4, 2010
I've now been thinking about lean continuously for thirty years, since the fall of 1979 when my MIT bosses asked me to explore how a few Japanese companies had developed a striking advantage in designing and making motor vehicles. Recently, I've found myself reflecting on where we in the Lean Community have been, where we are today, and where we need to go next. read more »
Back to Work
February 16, 2010
Only a month ago I wrote about going beyond Toyota. And in light of the last month's events, I suppose that must seem prescient. But actually it wasn't because I wasn’t writing about Toyota. I was writing about the path ahead for our Lean Community. I want to continue that thought process this month, based on your feedback to my request for responses. read more »
Beyond Toyota
January 7, 2010
We’ve won the battle of ideas on how to operate and improve processes. But creating management systems and organizations that can practice (not just preach) lean every day year after year turns out to be a lot harder. read more »
On Our Watch
December 3, 2009
A few weeks ago I walked through the Arsenale in Venice, which has been in continuous use for building and overhauling military ships since 1104. The Arsenale is still an Italian naval base and visiting requires permission from navy headquarters in Rome. But my interest was not in present-day activities. It was in the remarkable history of the Arsenale as a landmark in the long history of lean thinking. read more »
Making Everyone Whole
November 5, 2009
I've had a big smile on my face for much of the last month because I've had the opportunity to visit progressive organizations on three continents to look at their efforts to create lean value streams. Walking through any process, good or bad, seems to put a smile on my face for one of two reasons. If the process is awful it's easy to see how it could be better. And, if it has already been significantly improved from its original condition, I'm both pleased by the progress and aware that the next layer of waste is now visible and ready for elimination. read more »
In Search of Value Stream Architects
September 3, 2009
Recently I've been spending most of my gemba time walking through value-creating processes in organizations far away from manufacturing. And the further away I get -- for example, all the way to healthcare -- the more I find myself asking, "Who designed this wasteful, incapable, unavailable, inadequate, inflexible, uneven, and disconnected value stream in the first place? And who is responsible for its performance now?" The answer in most cases is that usual suspect, No One. read more »
The Mind of the Lean Manager
July 30, 2009
Several years ago I started to talk about the need to move beyond lean tools - including the very powerful concept of Value-Stream Mapping - to lean management. At the same time we at LEI began to publish a set of volumes on lean management techniques. These consist of strategy deployment to set priorities from the top of the organization, A3 analysis to deploy new initiatives and solve problems in the middle of the organization, and standardized work with kaizen to create stability and sustainability at the bottom of the organization where value is actually created. read more »
Sailing a Straight Course in a Time of Variances
June 30, 2009
Recently I spent a day as a lean anthropologist, sitting in the back of the room and observing the behavior of senior managers during the monthly leadership team meeting of a large corporation. I hadn't done this in some years and it caused me to reflect again on how organizations do strange things, particularly in difficult times. read more »
The End of an Era
June 2, 2009
When General Motors filed for bankruptcy yesterday it marked the end of an era. The first truly modern, manage-by-the-numbers corporation, created by Alfred Sloan in the 1920s, was laid to rest as a viable concept. But what comes next? This is not just a question for GM or large enterprises more generally. read more »
Repurpose Before You Restructure
April 9, 2009
One of my favorite questions when meeting with senior leaders of enterprises is, "What is your organization's purpose?" read more »
Respect Science, Particularly in a Crisis
March 5, 2009
The current recession is the fifth in my working career. And it is beginning to feel like the worst. I can't imagine that any manager or improvement team member in any industry in any country isn't feeling a bit queasy at this point, as the world economy keeps recessing toward an unknown bottom. Where should we go to calibrate our North Star in times like these, to reassure ourselves that we are on the most promising path? Recently I've found one answer. read more »
Constancy of Purpose
February 11, 2009
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 first read this many years ago it seemed so simple and obvious. How could anyone not have constancy of purpose? Now that I'm older and wiser, or at least older, I have discovered that this simple attitude is often the missing element when managers set out to create a lean enterprise. read more »
Learning to Manage
January 22, 2009
My colleague John Shook has recently written a wonderful book for LEI about "managing to learn". By this he means the method of discovery that lean managers use to deploy initiatives from higher organizational levels, solve problems at their organizational level, and evaluate proposals from lower organizational levels. By using this method at every level on a continuing basis, organizations truly learn how to learn while creating ever better managers. read more »
2008 in Summary: A Large Enough Wave Swamps All Boats
December 31, 2008
We all know the phrase, "a rising tide lifts all boats", and this was true during the world economic bubble of the last few years. Unfortunately, there is a corollary. A really big tide - a financial tsunami - can at least briefly tip even the sturdiest boat. What does the current financial tsunami mean for the lean movement? read more »
Mega Mura Bubble Trouble
November 13, 2008
I started writing my monthly e-letter in October of 2001 to speak to the worries of the Lean Community as the world economy slid into recession. So this month marks the end of one complete cycle -- seven years of bust, boom, and bust -- as the world enters a new recession. read more »
It Takes 2 (or more) to A3
October 7, 2008
No one can create a useful A3 in isolation. It takes at least two individuals and often many more. Developing an A3 involves an organizational drama in which someone identifies a condition or problem needing attention. The owner of the A3 – at whatever level of the organization – cannot address the condition or solve the problem alone. He or she must go to the gemba and talk directly with everyone touching the problem. read more »
Manage the Contract or Improve the Value Stream?
September 16, 2008
As much as I would like to, I can't walk frequently along every type of value stream. As a result, it has been a while since I've walked along the complex value streams shared by customer firms and their suppliers. So when several firms recently offered a chance to take multi-organization walks -- from the point of customer use back to the beginning of supplier manufacture -- I was delighted to put on my walking shoes and stride along with teams from the customer and supplier organizations. read more »
The Worst Form of Muda
August 14, 2008
One of the souvenirs I collect on my visits to different countries is special reasons why lean is impossible in each country. This is all part of what I think of as the worst form of muda: Thinking you can't. This of course guarantees you can't. read more »
From Staffs Conducting Programs to Line Managers Solving Problems
July 17, 2008
As part of a new LEI research project on lean management, I have been visiting with a number organizations well along in lean transformations. Here’s a typical story from a recent visit. read more »
Nice Car, Long Journey
June 6, 2008
2008 marks the 100th anniversary of the introduction of the Model T Ford. This truly is “the machine that changed the world”, even if the title of a 1990 book might suggest otherwise! Nearly 16 million copies were built over 19 years of production as the world was motorized. The Model T in many ways marks the beginning of the lean era. So I recently decided I should go to Detroit and learn to drive a Model T. read more »
Creating Value or Shifting Wealth?
May 1, 2008
How do we judge the progress of the Lean Movement? One critical indicator is our success in extending lean thinking to new industries and activities. In recent years I have been greatly encouraged that lean thinking is moving far beyond its origins in manufacturing to distribution, retailing, maintenance and overhaul, consumer services, construction, and – perhaps most striking – healthcare. read more »
The Big Mura and Mean Leanness
April 3, 2008
How can we have dramatic short-term gyrations in an economy whose business is to supply what a relatively constant number of us need? I think of these gyrations as another form of mura, the term used by lean thinkers to describe short-term variations in demand not caused by a change in the long-term desires of the consumer. read more »
Yokoten Across the World
March 6, 2008
The trick to yokoten, the term Toyota uses for the horizontal transfer of information and knowledge across an organization, is to be sure that someone is responsible for accumulating the knowledge where it has been developed – and direct observation on the gemba is always the best way to learn. read more »
The Missing Link
February 7, 2008
There is a missing link between the world’s brilliant objects – now cheaper and better in many cases because of lean thinking applied to their design and manufacture –- and support for these objects through their lives. And Lean Thinkers now need to bridge this gap. read more »
Cadence
January 3, 2008
What do the numbers 1/16, 4/04, 5/03, 5/30, 8/22, 10/23 and 12/20 have in common? They are the dates (day/month) that I sent out my e-letters in 2007. What does this series lack? A smooth cadence! So let me share my New Year's resolution for 2008... read more »
Respect for People
December 20, 2007
For years I've visited companies where "respect for people" is a core element of the corporate philosophy. So I've asked managers in many companies a simple question. "How do you show respect?" I have usually heard that employees should be treated fairly, given clear goals, trusted to achieve them in the best way, and held to account for results. For example, "We hire smart people, we give them great latitude in how they do their work because we trust them, and we hold them to objective measures of performance. That’s respect for people." read more »
Ten Years and Counting
October 23, 2007
What do we at LEI -- and in the whole lean movement -- need to do now? This is the all-important “act” step in the PDCA cycle, the equals sign in the equation. My conclusion is that we need to describe a new approach to leadership and management that can fully utilize the many lean tools now available. read more »
Kaizen or Rework?
August 22, 2007
I recently visited a contract electronics manufacturer with a striking capacity for kaizen – the steady improvement of every step along its key value streams. Dozens of kaizen events were being performed across the company to eliminate wasted steps and to remedy quality, availability, adequacy, and flexibility problems in each value stream. At the same time, kaizen teams were trying to speed continuous flow and to perfect pull systems when flow was not possible. read more »
The Problem of Sustainability
May 30, 2007
I recently got a call from an old friend who led one of the first lean implementation efforts in healthcare in the mid-1990s. He has moved on to other challenges and we hadn't had a chance to catch up in recent years. So I asked him what happened to the lean initiative in the healthcare organization where he had been a senior manager. The answer was what I feared. read more »
Creating Lean Healthcare
May 3, 2007
Ten years ago this month I made a visit to the Mayo Clinic’s large medical complex in Rochester, Minnesota. I was not there as a patient. Instead I was a sort of lean anthropologist. I was making my first foray into a major medical organization to examine its thought process and behavior from a lean perspective. read more »
Why Toyota Won and How Toyota Can Lose
April 4, 2007
Simon & Schuster has just re-issued The Machine That Changed the World, which Dan Jones, Dan Roos, and I co-authored 17 years ago. Doubtless, our publisher has noticed the current Toyota boom when any book with "Toyota" on the cover sells, but It still has a story to tell. As new CEO Alan Mulally remarked to Ford employees when he arrived in Detroit last fall, it is the best summary of why Toyota is winning. Toyota's real challenge for the future is to introduce and sustain lean management and lean leadership at every point in a rapidly growing organization. read more »
More Thinking About Lean Transformation
January 16, 2007
Recently we at the Lean Enterprise Institute have started a new research project trying to answer a simple question: “What is the best way to conduct a lean transformation?” read more »
What I've Learned About Planning and Execution
December 14, 2006
By the time I founded the Lean Enterprise Institute in mid-1997, I had been thinking for years about how organizations prioritize and plan. And I had carefully read the policy deployment (hoshin kanri) literature emerging from Japan since the 1970s. So I thought it would be easy to develop and implement both a long-range and a one-year plan. read more »
From Lean Tools to Lean Management
November 21, 2006
I’ve been thinking about the challenge of lean transformation for 27 years now, since I started studying Toyota as part of the MIT global automotive project in 1979. That’s a long time and during this period I’ve watched lean thinking progress through a series of stages. read more »
Gross Domestic Product Verses Gross Domestic Waste
October 23, 2006
I’ve always been fascinated by how humans count, especially the way we always seem to count the wrong things. Recently I was looking at the American counting of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The U.S. government reports that GDP was up 2.6% in the second quarter of 2006, after rising 5.8% in the first quarter, and the economists offering commentary seem to think this is good. But for the Lean Thinker this should just be the start of the discussion. read more »
The Lean Way Forward at Ford
September 15, 2006
I’ve been reflecting on today’s remarkable headlines about the latest retreat by the Ford Motor Company as part of its “Way Forward” campaign. While reflecting, I have found it useful to think about the history of lean thinking at Ford, going back nearly 100 years. I believe it offers many useful lessons for our current-day lean journey and Ford’s immediate choices. read more »
Thinking End to End
August 11, 2006
Every value stream runs from raw materials all the way to the end customer. And value for the customer is only delivered at the very end. In many service industries, of course, the “raw material” is information rather than molecules -- like the data in the claim application processed by an insurance company. But the situation is the same. Value is only delivered at the end of the stream. read more »
Mura, Muri, Muda?
July 6, 2006
Twenty years ago this month, when my first daughter was born, the young men I supervised in MIT’s International Motor Vehicle Program went dashing out of the office to buy her a gift. They returned shortly with a pink T-shirt, size 1, with the stenciled message on the front “Muda, Mura, Muri.” My wife was bewildered – “Is this how guys welcome a baby girl?!” But I could understand. read more »
Purpose, Process, People
June 12, 2006
Recently I have heard from several members of the Lean Community wanting to know how to evaluate the lean efforts of their company. “How do we know how lean we are?” “What metrics should we use to measure our progress?” “Are we ‘world-class’ in terms of lean?” (Whatever ‘world-class’ is!) Because I’ve been getting calls of this type for years and they seem to keep coming, let me share my answer. read more »
Fewer Heroes, More Farmers
May 12, 2006
I recently met with the chief executive of a very large American corporation organized by business units, each self-contained with its own product development, production, purchasing and sales functions. I asked what a CEO does in this situation and got a simple answer: “I search for heroic leaders to galvanize my business units. I give them metrics to meet quickly. When they meet them, they are richly rewarded. When they don't, I find new leaders.” read more »
Lean Leadership
April 4, 2006
In the nine years since its founding, LEI has acheived quite a lot. We've produced highly successful series of workbooks and workshops on lean methods at the operating level. We've even produced a lean novel and we've run conferences in which we tried to rally the troops and build a sense of Lean Community. And we have created a global Lean Community via the web that now has more than 88,000 members from 89 countries. But after some hansei (self-reflection) this past year, we concluded that we need to do more. read more »
A Tale of Two Business Systems
February 7, 2006
In the fall of 1990, The Machine That Changed the World forecast that 1991 or 1992 would be the moment of crisis as the full power of lean (represented by Toyota) threatened to topple mass production (defended by General Motors). We were off in our timing. The moment of truth was actually delayed 15 years. What now seems certain is that Toyota will pass GM in 2006 to become the world’s largest industrial enterprise and that GM and Ford will undergo a profound transformation, whether led by current managers or by someone else. read more »
Just in Time, Just in Case, and Just Plain Wrong
January 22, 2006
Jim Womack responds the the January 12th Wall Street Journal headline “Just-In-Time Inventories Make U.S. Vulnerable to a Pandemic” read more »
The Big Opportunity
November 7, 2005
I started studying manufacturing performance 26 years ago this fall. We set out at MIT to perform the most exhaustive and accurate benchmarking of the world’s largest manufacturing industry – motor vehicles – because we believed this was the best proxy for manufacturing in general and believed that a sea change in manufacturing practice was occurring. read more »
Necessary But Not Sufficient
October 17, 2005
One of the hardest things in my line of work is seeing a company make enormous strides in getting lean and yet fail to prosper. Today’s heartbreak is Delphi, the giant American auto-parts company that was one of the founding sponsors of LEI and which has been a test bed for our ideas and publications over the past eight years. As you may know, Delphi filed for bankruptcy on October 8 and is now in reorganization. So what went wrong? read more »
Lean Publishing and Lean Solutions
September 8, 2005
Normally I walk through other people’s industries. But today let me take a brief walk through my own: publishing. You don’t have to walk far to discover some amazing things… read more »
Lean Consumption, Lean Provision, and Lean Solutions
August 16, 2005
Here’s some good news for the Lean Community. I was recently in Spain where I toured a facility belonging to an American company whose U.S. operations I first visited in 1992.Happily, I found a truly lean operation headed by a veteran manager who had added techniques that the company had learned from supplying Toyota to the lean methods already in place. I suddenly began to see that lean thinking at the plant level is now rippling across the world from many points of learning, with the waves reinforcing each other. read more »
The Truth Lies in the Lies of Fiction
May 31, 2005
Twenty years ago, while flying to a final vacation before the onset of children, I found myself reading Eli Goldratt's The Goal. It was a great story, even if a little short on practical advice. I've been a bit short on reading time since that trip, but I have often found myself wishing that someone would tell the story of a lean transformation in a compelling fictional form that combines the emotional elements of change with detailed advice on what to do. ecently and out of the blue I received a manuscript for the “lean” novel I had long been seeking read more »
The Problem with Creative Work and Creative Management
May 10, 2005
Categorizing the existing steps is a great way to start lean thinking, and it’s pretty easy in a factory environment when drawing a value-stream map. But when lean thinkers move beyond the factory, as many are doing today, it’s easy to get confused about the nature of work. read more »
The Dramatic Spread of Lean Thinking
April 11, 2005
Without question, lean thinking was born in the factory. Then lean thinking spread to logistics, to tie supplier production tightly to assembler needs and to get products from assemblers to customers, and product development, as a process leading from concept to launch. Currently we are experiencing an explosion of interest in applying lean thinking to practically every process in every corner of the world. read more »
Lean Consumption
March 7, 2005
Everything we do in our work lives should be creating value in some process. Or why are we doing it? And much mental energy in the lean community is devoted to thinking of ways to eliminate process steps that don’t create value. This is great, but it’s still not the whole story. read more »
Lean Leadership
February 3, 2005
On my gemba walks I often get comments and questions about leadership. “We can’t seem to get anywhere because we don’t have any leadership.” “Who should lead the lean transformation?” “Is a ‘lean’ leader different from any other type of leader?” I certainly don’t have all the answers, but I have been thinking about this issue for many years so I thought I would share what I’ve learned. read more »
The State of Lean 2005
January 11, 2005
As we enter the New Year, I find my attention turning from the history of lean (as described last month) to the future of lean. What do I see? read more »
A Lean Walk Through History
December 7, 2004
Most of us don’t realize that we are heirs to a remarkably long struggle in human history to see beyond isolated points in order to optimize the entire value creating process. We tend to think instead that lean ideas were mostly created by Toyota a few years ago and that the history of lean thinking has been short and easy. read more »
Lean Information Management
November 5, 2004
Recently I was walking through a manufacturing operation and found myself wondering about the principles of lean information management, in particular with regard to production control and fulfillment. read more »
Deconstructing the Tower of Babel
October 7, 2004
As the years have gone by, we seem to be building a lean Tower of Babel. I hear the term applied very vaguely and used to mean many things: goals (highest quality, lowest cost, shortest lead time), general methods (just-in-time, jidoka), specific tools (kanban, poka-yoke), and the basic foundation (heijunka, standardized work, and kaizen, built on process stability.) Here’s what lean means to me. read more »
Competition Equals Lean?
September 1, 2004
Those of us in the lean movement know that even in highly competitive industries like autos, companies can go for decades before they finally get their heads around the need to create a lean process for every significant activity in their business. And in industries where there is no “Toyota” – healthcare comes instantly to mind – someone has to make a breakthrough in applying lean principles for the first time before anyone else will feel pressure to compete. read more »
Bad People or a Bad Process?
July 28, 2004
When good people are put in a bad process we often become “bad” like the process – mean spirited, foul mouthed, and even violent. Ask everyone involved what the problem is and they are very likely to blame everyone else rather than step back and think about the process itself and how it could be improved. read more »
Creating Basic Stability
May 25, 2004
On my recent walks through companies, I've had an important realization. I had been assuming that in most companies the process steps in a typical value stream are sufficiently stable that it's practical to introduce flow, pull, and leveled production right away. But I've been forced to conclude that a lot of us need to pay more attention to creating basic stability as we try to flow and pull. read more »
Standardized Worrying
April 26, 2004
Years ago when Dan Jones and I first visited Toyota in Japan, we were struck by something that seemed out of keeping with their continuing success. They seemed to worry all the time. read more »
The Wonder of Level Pull
March 31, 2004
Many years ago in Toyota City I first witnessed the twin concepts of level production and the smooth pull of needed items throughout a complex production operation. My education occurred at a supplier of components to Toyota assembly plants that had created a small and precisely determined inventory of finished components near the shipping dock. Read more. read more »
Lean Beyond the Factory
March 23, 2004
I've been thinking a lot recently about just what a business really is. As a lean process thinker, my best answer is that a business is a collection of value creating processes. Indeed, it's the sum of its processes. read more »
Adding Cost or Creating Value?
March 4, 2004
I was out on tour this past week, listening to companies' stories as they try to achieve a "lean" transformation. And I was struck, as I often am, by confusing terminology. The companies I visited thought they were "adding value" but I mostly watched them adding cost. So let me try to clarify things. read more »
Why We Are a Nonprofit (And How You Can Benefit)
February 3, 2004
Every month I get calls and emails from folks thinking the Lean Enterprise Institute (LEI) is a consulting business and wanting to hire a sensei. And I get other calls and emails asking if we have a certification program for lean practitioners. (Lean Belts?) And I get still more calls and emails from Lean Thinkers searching for jobs and from firms seeking to employ lean experts, with both thinking we are some sort of executive search firm. read more »
The Prospects for Lean
January 7, 2004
As we all return to work in the New Year, I wanted to provide a few thoughts on the prospects for lean thinking in the years ahead. read more »
Is Lean Mean?
December 2, 2003
I was recently asked a question that demanded an answer: “How can you advocate ideas that improve efficiency but destroy jobs? What the world needs now is more work, not just more productivity.” In other words, “Lean is mean.” Is it? read more »
Is Lean Green?
November 4, 2003
People often tell me that lean thinking must be “green” because it reduces the amount of energy, manufacturing space, and wasted by-products required to produce a given product. But what happens when lean production also reduces the cost of products and causes consumers to buy more? Lean can support green. Just in a different way. read more »
The Power of a Precise Process
October 1, 2003
When I first started to study the Toyota Production System many years ago, I was struck by something very simple: Its utter precision. Equally striking, there was a clear knowledge of the current state of each operation and a vision of a better state to be achieved quickly through kaizen. Nothing seemed to happen by chance and continuous improvement was easier because the base condition was visible to everyone. read more »
Dueling Sensei and the Need for a Standard Operating System
September 11, 2003
Recently I witnessed a sight I’ve seen too many times before. I was visiting a company when a new sensei (Japanese for “teacher”) arrived to advise on the firm’s lean conversion. The first thing the sensei said to the vice president for operations was, “My method has nothing in common with the method of your previous sensei. You must now do everything my way.” read more »
Beach Reading
August 12, 2003
The second edition of Lean Thinking has been out two months now and at least a few members of the Lean Community seem to have used it for beach reading. I’m grateful, but they’ve also e-mailed me with an interesting question: “Whatever happened to the bicycle company you talk about in Chapter 3? Why isn’t its success mentioned in the new Chapter 14 in the same breath as Toyota’s?” Well…there is a story to tell and I thought I would share it as a bit of beach reading for everyone. read more »
Jim Womack on how lean compares with Six Sigma, Re-engineering, TOC, TPM, etc., etc.
July 14, 2003
It amazes me, but I still get lots of questions about how “lean” compares with Six Sigma, Total Productive Maintenance, Business Process Re-engineering, Demand-Flow, the Theory of Constraints, and other approaches to improvement. And I always give the same answer: At the end of the day we are all trying to achieve the same thing: The perfect value stream. Here’s how I think about it. read more »
We Have Been (Lean) Thinking
May 21, 2003
In the many years since we launched Lean Thinking, events amply confirm our long-held view that managers will try anything easy that doesn’t work before they will try anything hard that does. The good news is that the disasters of recent years in pursuing worthless easy things have prepared all of us to tackle the one hard thing (lean thinking) that always works. read more »
Lean Thinking for Air Travel
May 5, 2003
Recently I got a call from an aide to Don Carty at American Airlines (their Chairman who resigned this past week.) This person wanted to apply lean thinking to air travel and asked what I thought about their “lean” idea. read more »
Here’s to Toyota
April 15, 2003
More than twenty years ago Dan Jones and I made an important discovery. On a trip to Japan we concluded that there was really no “Japan, Inc.” or standardized way of doing business. Instead there were many companies pursuing a variety of approaches, some very good and some mediocre. Most important, we concluded that best of the best was Toyota. This company, rather than anything generically “Japanese”, became our image of the business system to copy or exceed. read more »
Taking a Value Stream Walk at Firm A
March 12, 2003
I was out walking through a company this past week, something I often do. The firm I visited had asked what I thought of their lean efforts to date and I paid a visit to find out. While flying home, it occurred to me that you might find my method and checklist of some use in your own improvement activities. So, let me share it with you. read more »
LEI looks for success stories to share
February 26, 2003
I routinely end my talks by offering to give anyone 15 minutes of fame in my and Dan Jones’s next book if they will do something new and notable in lean practice. This is a sincere offer and we were able to make good on it with our case studies of Lantech, Wiremold, Pratt & Whitney, Porsche, and a number of other companies in Lean Thinking. read more »
Move Your Operations to China? Do some lean math first.
January 10, 2003
I recently got a phone call from a reporter for The Wall Street Journal with a simple but provocative question: "If you are a manufacturer in a high-wage country such as the U.S., can you ever be lean enough that you don't need to relocate your operations to China?" My answer to this simple question was also simple: "Do some math before you move and make sure it's lean math." read more »
Year-end Message About the State of the Lean Community
December 20, 2002
As I've noted before with some sadness, economic distress is good for lean thinking. Taiichi Ohno said long ago that most companies are only willing to tackle their version of the Toyota Production System when they are desperate. And we've had plenty of desperation this past year. read more »
Substituting Money for Value Stream Management
November 13, 2002
I've been traveling again since I last wrote, this time to visit a household-name American company trying to pursue perfection in its total business after starting with an all-out Six Sigma initiative. What I found is a pretty common pattern. read more »
The “Right Sequence” for Implementing Lean
October 11, 2002
One of the best things about leading the Lean Enterprise Institute is that I travel widely to learn how things are going across the Lean Community. Recently I've looked at two truly interesting operations, one in New Hampshire, USA, and the other outside of Chennai, India. Together they provide an important lesson about lean transformations. read more »
What do you need from LEI?
August 1, 2002
August 1 marks the fifth anniversary of the Lean Enterprise Institute. In our first five years we've conducted Lean Summits across the world and produced a series of workbooks and workshops that many of you have bought and attended. Let me take this occasion to express our deep gratitude for your continuing support. read more »
A Great Time for Lean Thinking
June 25, 2002
I’ve just been reading the financial news and realizing that this is a great time to be a lean thinker. In fact, it’s the best environment for lean thinking that I’ve seen in more than a decade. Here’s why. read more »
LEI Expands Global Network
June 3, 2002
When I founded the Lean Enterprise Institute in Boston in 1997, I wanted to create a global network of non-profit institutes working horizontally to advance the ideas of lean thinking by conducting Lean Summits, presenting workshops, and offering translations of lean workbooks in their country or region... read more »
LEI's indicator that can't lie: Doing the math
April 12, 2002
Jim elaborates on the idea of using inventory turns as a measure of lean transformation read more »
Getting Back to Basics
March 19, 2002
I recently had a request from a Detroit newspaper to write a brief piece for the Motor Show on how American car companies can get turned in the right direction. In reading it over, I realized that my advice would be the same for any company in any industry in any country, so I thought I would pass it along. read more »
LEI’s new tool for seeing the big picture
March 1, 2002
We introduce the latest LEI workbook, Seeing the Whole, which provides a simple tool for mapping the extended value stream for your product families read more »
LEI's New Indicator That Can't Lie
February 22, 2002
I’m often asked by operations managers how they can know if their firm is really getting lean. My answer is simple: Just check your inventory “turns.” read more »
An LEI New Year's Resolution: No Wallpaper!
January 8, 2002
I've resolved that in 2002 no one in the lean community will turn their value stream maps into corporate wallpaper by failing to actually implement their Future States read more »
Shopping for a Sensei
December 19, 2001
We at LEI have been getting a lot of requests recently to help companies find lean expertise for harder times. Here are some simple guidelines for finding the lean "sensei" (Japanese for "teacher") you may need read more »
Lean Alternative to "Spaghetti World"
November 28, 2001
It's now time to re-think the connectivity costs of the "spaghetti world" we've built, where every part in every product seems to travel several times across national borders as it progresses from raw materials to the customer. The alternative is "value stream compression" in which all of the steps in fabricating and assembling product families are "compressed" in one place to dramatically reduce throughput times while largely eliminating connectivity costs read more »
10 Lean Steps for Surviving the Recession
November 20, 2001
Jim provides an action play for lean thinkers to think leaner to get through the recession and secure a strong position for the upturn. read more »
The Human Side of Hard Times
October 31, 2001
Harder times call for leaner thinking and presented an action plan, but what about the human side? Lean thinking requires that everyone at every level put in their best efforts and this isn't plausible if employees don't feel their employer is fair in the downturn. So what is the right thing to do with your people? read more »
Action Plan for Hard Times
October 23, 2001
Last week I pointed out that the big leaps in applying lean thinking have all been made in hard times. I therefore urged everyone to seize the opportunity forced on us by the recession. But just what should you do? read more »
Leaner Thinking for Harder Times
October 16, 2001
So now we have the recession of 2001. Its time for all of us to marshal our energies, focus our efforts and apply lean thinking all the way up and down our value streams. read more »
Nonsense about JIT
October 4, 2001
In almost every value stream, there will be some inventory at points where the product cannot flow. This inventory will typically consist of finished goods at the shipping point in each facility, work-in-process between fabrication steps within each facility, and raw materials (incoming goods) at the receiving end of each facility. read more »