The Lean Thinker

Art Smalley has a fantastic web site called Art of Lean.

I highly recommend it to anyone who is looking for “where to begin.”

Pay special attention to the e-learning piece on “Basic Stability.” This is where the money is, folks. Most of the waste (probably almost all of the waste) in your operation today is the result of inconsistency and variation. If you can get the daily problem solving engine started and systematically attack sources of variation in your operation every day, you will probably double your productivity over a couple of years. Is that worth it? I didn’t make that number up. I know a plant that got just those results and did nothing more than attack variation to get there.