Category: Blogs

When you think of the world’s most efficient and successful performance and supply chains, what comes to mind? For many, large corporate giants like Dell, Wal-Mart, and Coca-Cola instantly pop into our heads. But few, if any, would think a cultural structure and meal delivery system in Mumbai, India, would be among the […]

Process improvement projects have typically been a labor-intensive and imprecise process. Labor-intensive in that capturing the as-designed vs the actual current-state process required facilitated meetings, interviews, surveys and analyzing operational data over an extended time period. Imprecise in that workers will typically act differently when they know they are being watched and measured. The Hawthorne […]

In Six Sigma problem solving, it is often important to calculate the likelihood that a combination of events or an ordered combination of events will occur. Understanding some of the basic concepts of probability provides practitioners with the tools to make predictions about events or event combinations. This provides a good foundation for understanding probability […]

The Lean Six Sigma (LSS) Green Belt and Black Belt curriculum needs an overhaul. The original operational excellence (OpEx) Lean Six Sigma methodology developed by Motorola in the 1980s and made famous by Jack Welch at General Electric (GE) in the early 1990s is finding itself a bit long in the tooth in comparison to […]

5S is a Lean tool that helps in workplace organization. The following is the list of five Japanese words and their translation in English. (Seiri) Sorting and prioritizing: Going through all the tools, materials, etc., in the work area and keeping only the essential items. Everything else is stored or discarded. (Seiton) Straighten or set […]

If you are like me, you may find yourself writing a fair number of MS Excel macros to automate repeatable tasks. One day it dawned on me, however, that several of the aspects of writing macros were repeatable tasks themselves. When writing a macro I would often start by: Creating a data structure that would […]

Successful innovation is not only about the creation of a new idea but also about its execution.

QFD speeds up the product development process by removing what doesn’t matter to the customer. Just like the Kano analysis, QFD is interested in what the customer says is important. The format of QFD removes the time-consuming activities that don’t add value.

We must understand the needs and values of the customers at a deeper level. To this end we employ Kano analysis.

The customer journey value stream (CJVS) is the best starting place for the Lean community to engage in the processes of product development.

Why hasn’t Lean revolutionized product development like it has operations? We don’t share product development knowledge.

By using smaller bites from a large problem, you can quantitatively assess performance and then apply improvement changes.

The Colorado Department of Transportation’s Lean Everyday Idea program has successfully implemented over 345 ideas as of fall 2020. But how does the word spread across an entire state?

The foremost purpose of the gemba walk is people-engagement. Here are some suggestions for conducting a gemba walk in the virtual space.

As we consider our business response to COVID-19, take a truly Lean approach. See JIT in the context of Lean and evolve it as necessary, using the change in environment to identify waste and see new problems as opportunities for new improvements.

Icebreakers can help teams to build community, promote interaction and foster empathy. Some of the go-to icebreakers I have used over the years have translated well into the virtual environment.

Why not do something novel and use the tool that is best for the job at hand independent of an acronym?

If there’s one thing that the coronavirus pandemic has made glaringly apparent, it’s that we need to do a better job with prioritization and, ultimately, delegation, execution and communication.

Someone asked: “Why do 5S [sort, simplify, shine, standardize, sustain]? It’s just going to get dirty again.”

Improvement is like a mighty fire. You must continue to add firewood to keep the fire burning. If you stop, the fire will surely burn out. Lots of repetition builds the fire of improvement capability and culture.

We read or hear “facts” and accept them without critical thought. This article reviews a sample of the kind of facts we accept in the workplace that sometimes we should not.

Lean can be of great value in office environments. However, the use of complex jargon and statistics, plus a focus on manufacturing, have hindered the adoption of these tools in other settings where they can be useful.

If your goal is control at all cost, or faster and deeper analysis, automation might be just the strategy for you. But if you need to retain and motivate your people to boost business performance, such a strategy of people avoidance is likely to come to a sticky end.

Depending upon the particular organization, quality may or may not be influential in management decision-making. Ultimately, it depends upon what is understood as quality. There may be more urgent tactical actions than those related to quality if the organization’s product or service quality is acceptable – it may not be perfect, but if it’s acceptable then that’s good enough.