April 2007 | Page 4 of 5

What I Learned Today of Value

By Jon Miller - April 10th, 2007

See it through. Delay if you must, but don’t retreat. Follow up until you get an answer, good or bad. Check again. Get it done. Only then, start the next thing.

I did some hansei today on my drive home from work and realized I have been too grumpy lately. I jumped all over the airlines industry… then went after some software folks… and then tonight I had prepared to pummel a

Jidoka – The Forgotten Pillar

By Ron - April 9th, 2007

In the Toyota Production System house there are two pillars. The one pillar most of the books are written about is JIT. You know all the fun stuff about one piece flow and pull. But there is an entire other pillar that, in my opinion

A Fairly Lean Healthcare Experience

By Jon Miller - April 9th, 2007

I hope everyone who celebrates Easter had a good Easter Sunday, and those of you who don’t also had a good weekend. Thanks to a culture change in my throat brought on by some visiting Streptococcus, I didn’t have a good wee

The Airline Companies Amaze Me

By Ron - April 8th, 2007

In Lean and Six Sigma we speak about the importance of understanding value from the perspective of the customer. If you miss this all the Kanban and Control Charts in the world won’t help you. Most of the airline companies in

Happy Easter!

By Ron - April 7th, 2007

I, along with my family, wish you a safe and happy Easter. I hope you are able to enjoy some time off with friends and loved ones.

Layoffs, Strategy and the Bimodal Hump

By Jon Miller - April 6th, 2007

If you haven’t exercised your neck muscles lately, read the first few paragraphs of the article Short-Circuited: Cutting Jobs as Corporate Strategy and shake your head in disbelief as you scratch Circuit City off of your shopping

Un-Lean Lean Companies

By Ron - April 6th, 2007

I recently purchased some Value Stream Mapping software and got a kick out the experience. Here I was buying software to help me battle waste and inefficiency, right? Well I go to this company’s website and click “buy now” next t

Superfactory Training

By Ron - April 5th, 2007

I recently came across a news article about our friends over at the Superfactory. It seems they have recently launched some elearning and the prices are very affordable compared to some elearning I have seen from others. Upon further e

How to Get What You Want in Four Easy Steps

By Jon Miller - April 5th, 2007

About 20 years ago in a catchy pop song Joe Jackson said “You can’t get what you want till you know what you want.” I didn’t think much about those words at the time, but these words seem to contain deeper wisdom as the years g

Month: April 2007