Japan Lean Tour – Learning 1 – Improving your organisation everyday
“Improve what we can, now, one step at a time.”
Mr. KOSAKA, former Toyota plant manager
Many organisations we…
Field Service Excellence
Every company is different. Operational improvement levers depend on the business maturity and nature of each organisation. Work at a Field Service company revealed following good practices:…
Lean Construction: Engineering & Planning and why they matter
Implementing Lean Engineering and Lean Planning help keeping construction projects under control and finally get out of firefighting modus.
By Gilles…
An Introduction to Lean Construction
In a sector where price pressure is high, competition is intense and margins are low, General Contractors have to find ways to increase their efficiency…
7 Practical tips about filming in production for a SMED project
SMED
Single Minute Exchange of Die, is a technique that aspires to do any production line changeover in less…
The 10 types of Waste in the Office
Another infographic about different types of losses, but this time we focus on an office environment.
We see "Waste" as non-value adding…
What does it take to climb the mountain called Operational Excellence?
We post another infographic this week, in which we stipulate 4 critical success factors of a journey towards Operational…
The 8 types of Waste in Manufacturing
In the following infographic we summarise the different types of losses you can find in a production environment.
We see "Waste" as non-value…
What are the benefits of Lean?
Lean is a management philosophy that focuses on eliminating waste so that all activities or steps within processes add value in the customers’ perspective.…
Roles and Responsibilities in a Lean program
To make a Lean program successful, clear definition of Roles and Responsibilities is essential. Four key roles in any Lean program are…
What means respect for people
Let’s compare two situations in two different organizations that experience the same market pressure.
In the first organization, the pressure comes from the top-management and…
3 TIPS on Status Update meetings
Last week I started writing about meetings. More specifically, I gave some tips about making process improvement meetings more productive:
Kanban, F&B, and Side…
3 TIPS on running productive meetings
Last week I talked about what makes meeting rooms effective.
This week I will share some ideas about making actual meetings more productive.
First,…
The holy trinity of productive meeting rooms
As a consultant, you spend a lot of time in meeting rooms. Being a Lean consultant, I try to spend as much time…
Lean : Autonomous Problem Solving
Lets see if you recognize this story. We at company X do many projects. We have Engineering and IT departments, which help us improve…
Lean applied to running a marathon
One of my adolescent dreams was to run a marathon. I have been running since I was twelve but never crossed the line of…
Lean thinking: Shared vision and goals
Most organisations have a strategy. Some organisations succeed in executing that strategy extremely well, because they can engage all their employees. (Think of Proctor…
Lean mind-sets: Sell problems and ask solutions
One person that has inspired me doing Lean implementation work is Prof. Filip Vandendriessche and his work on managing people on Output (results…
Why Learning to see Losses matters
Starting to implement Lean? In the early stages, Lean change facilitators in your organisation, frequently helped by external consultants, will look at losses and…
Do you truly listen to the Voice of Your Customers?
Many organisations are focused on growth, profitability and efficiency. At the same time they overlook that their markets and customers…
Kaizen Problem Solving
Perhaps it was impatience with how long traditional projects take. Often it was an awareness of how hard it is for people to concentrate on improvement when…
How Effective Is Your Kaizen Leader?
A Kaizen leader heads up a team committed to identified quality improvement processes within a company. All team members benefit directly from the results…
