Tips for Lean Managers Archives | Page 6 of 22

10 Mistakes in Starting Lean Enterprise Transformations

By Jon Miller - October 11th, 2010

The are plenty of mistakes people can make when starting up a lean enterprise transformation. Interestingly, many of these mistakes are similar if not identical to those entrepreneurs make in starting a business. Perhaps these mistakes

Why Salmon Would Fail at Hoshin Kanri

By Jon Miller - September 8th, 2010

While cleaning out my pockets after a long summer of travel I found “hoshin is like salmon” on a bit of improvised note-taking paper, in my handwriting. If it was important enough to write down, the meaning of this scrawl s

Leaders Pull

By Jon Miller - September 6th, 2010

Leaders lead. Or do they? There is not always a cause and effect relationship between leadership actions and follower behavior. Not all leaders succeed at pulling people along in the same direction. If a leader needs to drive people in

How to Motivate Front Line Workers

By Jon Miller - August 9th, 2010

We are often asked the million dollar question, “How do we motivate the front line workers?” This is a high value question because people are any organization’s greatest yet often worst utilized asset. Understanding h

Andon Systems in a Land Where Red Means Go

By Jon Miller - July 2nd, 2010

My daily walk to the office is filled with quiet danger. Much of Shanghai is a scene of too many people too eager to get to wherever they think they must go on streets that are too narrow. I have been to Shanghai perhaps 10 times. Duri

The 12 Herculean Labors of Lean Leaders

By Jon Miller - June 17th, 2010

When we say that a task is Herculean, it means it is extremely difficult. Heracles was a Greek hero (Hercules in the Roman version) who got into some trouble for killing a member of his family in a fit of madness and was assigned a ser

Enhancing Total Management Commitment

By Jon Miller - June 2nd, 2010

In an e-mail, Junaid asked: How we will enhance top management commitment and involvement for implementation of Total Productive Maintenance (TPM)? This is a great general question to ask for any effort to establish excellence, maintai

How to Set Span of Control for Leaders

By Jon Miller - May 21st, 2010

Earlier in the week Jamie Flinchbaugh started a great conversatoin when he asked “what is the right span of control for a manager?” Jamie defined span as: “…how broad an individual managers responsibility is def

Where Old Dogmas Go to Die

By Jon Miller - May 16th, 2010

The death of dogma is the birth of morality. That’s a bit of winning 18th century philosophy from Immanuel “Never Say” Kant. Morality is the knowing of right from wrong at the level of truth. Dogma is personal opinion

The Necessity of Redundancy

By Jon Miller - April 21st, 2010

After every major natural disaster that disrupts global supply chains there are voices that cry out “A-ha! I told you just in time doesn’t work!” So with the Icelandic volcano turning European skies airoplane-free for

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