Lean Manufacturing

533 Articles

Here are 4.5 Signs that Your Lean May be L.A.M.E.

By Jon Miller - March 22nd, 2007

Mark Graban at the Lean Blog coined L.A.M.E. as “Lean As Misguidedly Executed” and Kevin Meyer at the Evolving Excellence blog builds on this idea in pointing out how Lean is often added on in press releases, though it may

Safety Glasses Are a Sign of Unsafe Processes

By Jon Miller - March 20th, 2007

I left the training room too eager to go to gemba today and forgot to put on my safety glasses. Within two minutes one of the safety coordinators on the shop floor stopped me and sent me back to get them. Kudos to the management of thi

Reading Lean for Dummies

By Jon Miller - March 17th, 2007

I just finished reading Lean for Dummies. It covers a lot of ground in 362 pages. It’s full of diagrams, lists and other useful visuals. It is light and accessible reading. Parts IV “The Lean Enterprise” and Part V &#

Lean for People of Average Intelligence

By Jon Miller - March 12th, 2007

When do you know a management concept has hit the mainstream? Like a bug to a windshield, “Lean” as a management approach has now hit bookshelves in the form of Lean for Dummies. It set me off on a minor rant in the office

The 5 Why Questions, Like All Roads, Lead to Rome

By Jon Miller - March 7th, 2007

Today Patrick Shumaker from Gemba forwarded a great example of asking “Why?” persistently until the root cause is found. Why are U.S. standard railroad gages 4 feet 8.5 inches? Rome. You can find the full story on this bull

Lean Culture in a Temporary Workforce

By Jon Miller - March 1st, 2007

Can you have Lean manufacturing without Lean enterprise? Can you have Lean enterprise without a Lean culture? Can you have Lean culture without a motivated shop floor? All of the trappings of operational excellence such as one piece fl

Lean Six Sigma is Not Lean

By Jon Miller - February 21st, 2007

Lean Six Sigma is not Lean. It is Six Sigma, but one that is more “Lean” than just regular “Six Sigma.” In the English language the adjective (Lean) modifies the noun or subject word (Six Sigma). So Lean Six Sig

Getting the CEO on a Kaizen Team is Like Pulling Teeth

By Jon Miller - February 19th, 2007

As I was flipping through my copy of the February 2007 issue of Dental Economics today, an interview with two Danaher executives caught my eye. Danaher is known as a leading American company who has quietly and profitably grown through

Rarely Has Ranting Been This Good

By Jon Miller - February 12th, 2007

Blogger BDG123 at Rantings on Markets, Economics and Business Strategy is an electrical engineer and mathematician by training, one-time corporate consultant and corporate sales and marketing executive in the information technology and

Building a Lean Video Library

By Jon Miller - February 11th, 2007

Our clients often ask us to help them with building a Lean video library. They want us to recommend 5 or 10 videos on Lean manufacturing that will help their people learn first the general concepts, then the more in-depth tools and sys

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